
An alternative argument for why women leave STEM - nabla9
https://medium.com/@kjmorenz/is-it-really-just-sexism-an-alternative-argument-for-why-women-leave-stem-cccdf066d8b1
======
GCA10
Thanks, Karen Morenz, for providing a unified, panoramic view of the ways that
the standard academic career progression short-changes many female scientists,
even if each step along the way seems to make sense.

It's worth taking a look at three other professions with long, high-intensity
pathways from apprentice to master --all of which have been wrestling with the
same challenges. They are management consulting, law and medicine. I've
written about them elsewhere.

In medicine, there's been a surge of female participation (and leadership) in
specialties such as dermatology, psychiatry and radiology, where it's
relatively easier to rearrange hours and training regimens to be family
compatible. There's been less progress in surgery, where hellish hours are
considered part of the journey.

In law, some firms have been experimenting with a blurring of the boundaries
between associate and partner, so that there's a middle level at which women
can enter into motherhood without tanking their career chances. (In the
traditional model, close to 40% of entry-level associates are female, but few
of them stick around to make partner.)

I'm wondering if either of those models is transferable to STEM academia. Are
there particular sub-disciplines where professional success and sane hours
might be more compatible? Similarly, are there tenure-track or quasi-tenure
track job titles that split the difference in tolerable ways?

I haven't researched these well enough to have clear answers. But it's worth
discussing.

~~~
entee
I agree with this and the subtlety of the OP’s argument. There is clearly a
problem, there are clearly many contributors, I have personally seen The OP
situation play out with my female friends/colleagues in STEM (and other “high
power” sectors). This does NOT discount that sexism still is a problem nor
that there may be cultural/societal norms that influence the family planning
issue.

It’s a complicated issue, it needs to be tackled on many fronts. As men in the
field we should advocate for those things Karen recommends, namely flexible
hours, obscenely convenient high quality childcare, and other supports to make
a career not the death of family.

Even if you disagree that there’s a problem here (and I think you’re wrong)
how would these changes cause harm? Wouldn’t it just be a better world if
people were less stressed by these things?

~~~
detoxdetox
Lost in the modern rush for status and money, "obscenely convenient high
quality daycare" used to be called "Motherhood" and was supplied by Mothers
themselves. Some would argue, the most valuable contribution to society, even
if not directly monetized.

To sustain a healthy population, we used to need 10 children per fertile
woman, which made "stay at home Mother" an obvious necessity for the vast
majority of women. In modern times, we get by with 2 children per fertile
woman, and that frees up a lot of female energy to be channeled elsewhere. It
is high time to recognize that 2 children is still a lot of effort and make
room for Mothers to take care of their own children.

Instead, we are soft forcing Mothers to drop their kids in the care of poorly
paid strangers at the earliest convenience, to spend their full time energy
enriching faceless shareholders. And have the gall to call this arrangement
"female empowerment".

~~~
maire
Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a
man to have a non-working wife. That is why the newly affluent men of the
mid-20th century wanted it so much. They came out of the great depression,
fought a great war, and wanted a wife at home. You should not judge all of
history by this one era.

The work of child care used to fall on the entire extended family. The nuclear
family reduced the flexibility in raising children. It was further reduced by
a lack of work-life balance for both fathers and mothers. When women started
working (again) the lack of flexibility fell on the mothers to fix.

In my own life - I worked, my mother worked, my grandmothers worked, and my
great grandmothers worked. I had flexibility through daycare, my awesome
husband, my awesome mother, and my awesome employers. I know they are all
awesome because when my daughter (a software engineer) faced the same issues,
her employer was not at all flexible. She quit work to stay at home with her
three boys. I have a bunch of engineering friends who faced the same issues as
my daughter. I originally thought they left the workforce out of choice and
now I know they did not.

~~~
detoxdetox
Of course! But that's only a tiny minority of wealthy women. Nobody is
claiming that, historically, women did not work. It's just that female work
was performed in proximity of their young children and interweaved with their
care. Which is work in itself as well.

The historical norm of peasant societies is gendered work roles. Roughly
speaking, the male works in the fields and the female works around the house /
village. This pattern is even present across age groups, not uncommon to see
10 year boys herding the cows to pasture, and 10 year girls milking the cows
at home. While I'm aware there are task and/or region and/or period specific
exceptions, we're talking of the general pattern of [european] peasant
societies here.

Women working away from their house and young children is the prevalent modern
anomaly.

~~~
axguscbklp
Working around the house/village is still work. Male peasants for the most
part don't work outside the house/village either. They usually work on fields
that relatively close to where they live. And a large fraction of the women
work alongside them. Older men and women - grandpas and grandmas, etc. - do a
lot of the childrearing while the younger women work.

------
tharne
I think the author buried the lede here. My biggest takeaway from the article
is that you'd have to be an absolute sucker to work in academia given how
poorly you'll be treated. Each person that puts up with this only makes the
problem worse, giving at least tacit approval to the status quo. If folks were
to start opting out of academia in larger numbers for jobs in private
industry, schools would be forced to improve working conditions.

Unlike lower-skilled workers, the kind of person who even has the opportunity
to get a PhD is also likely to have other good opportunities should they
choose to take them. Academics should improve their lot and that of others by
voting with their feet.

~~~
hguant
>My biggest takeaway from the article is that you'd have to be an absolute
sucker to work in academia given how poorly you'll be treated.

Every now and then I get an overwhelming sense of guilt when I talk to/think
about my friends who are engaged in academia or pursuing advanced degrees (I'm
28, for reference).

The crazy workloads they have, the insane restrictions on how they can do
their jobs, and the cut-throat nature of the industry means that they're
working so much harder than I am, and are either doing their part to advance
the grand sum of human knowledge, or are training to literally save peoples
lives...and I'm sitting here, a college drop out, getting paid _way_ more than
they're making, in an industry where I will never have any fears about job
security, playing with networking equipment and writing about it.

~~~
Traster
I worked in a company for a while that hired lots of people out of academia.
The fascinating thing was that despite the vast majority of candidates being
smart and incredibly well qualified, a massive chunk of them had been so tuned
to the stupid hoops you have to jump through for academia that they were near
worthless in industry. Whether that was the complete inability to treat other
people as equals, or just completely unable to apply themselves to actually
build something that could ship. Academia can be a real trap.

~~~
buzzkillington
If I had a dollar for every time someone mentioned prestige for why we should
be doing something I'd have had enough to fund one of those dumb projects.

------
ThrustVectoring
There's a big tendency to ignore the price at which career success is sold.
You have to give up more fulfilling and creative work, perhaps, or spend long
hours in front of a screen on difficult yet boring tasks, or put in years and
years of all-encompassing work in various qualification gauntlets. Not having
paid the price for fame in academic STEM, I have no jealousy of the success
these people have found - they have their fame, I have my free time.

I think a big issue in the study of gender differences in work is that it is
_much_ easier to quantify the salary earned than the price one must pay in
order to be successful in the field. About the best you can do is compare sub-
populations that have paid roughly the same price - eg, urban childless single
college-educated adults. At that point, studies generally show an
insignificant gender difference in wages and success.

So, why is there a gendered component to participation in high-pay/high-
sacrifice fields? I've not seen any sort of hard data, so I'd have to
speculate. If you made me single out a candidate for investigation, I'd have
to look into the how the heterosexual dating market will asymmetrically treat
career success. People respond to incentives, and dating success is one hell
of an incentive.

~~~
aratakareigen
Yeah, I'm super uninformed here, but single men's expectations of potential
partners are totally the prime suspect here.

Anecdote: My uncle explicitly stated on his dating profile that he was looking
for women _with masters degrees_ who were willing to stay at home. I have no
idea why he wanted that or why my dad's sister agreed, but this kind of demand
is oddly common.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
> single men's expectations of potential partners are totally the prime
> suspect here.

It's both genders; women do not lack agency in the dating market. It'd be as
fair to make "my partner should be willing to give up their career to start a
family" as the default and blame the dynamic on women - after all, they prefer
men who are unwilling to compromise in the pursuit of their career.

I try to avoid either, and just mention that this axis has a gendered
component in terms of both what people do and desire.

------
lordnacho
One thing that she touched on that I've thought a lot about recently is the
age at which we have kids. My father passed away a couple of weeks ago, and I
compare him to his brother. My uncle had his first kid 10 years younger than
my dad, and he ended up with the fourth one being older than me. He's got 10
grandchildren, the oldest of which is an adult now. My dad's grandchildren
will never know him in any real way.

Since the funeral I've thought about this a lot. Our later-life relationships
will be affected by the age at which we had kids. I'm sure this is in the
minds of a lot of people in this economic age. There's a lot of "investing in
your career" where the equation doesn't account for this.

I wish we could have an economy where this was easier. Say you could have your
kids early, in your 20s, yet still progress your career. Perhaps pay for it
with working to an older age, which should be possible with some improved
health outcomes. Along with a flexible education system that allowed you come
in and out. And perhaps incentives for firms to let people in and out, instead
of the constant career grind that requires people to constantly push. Some of
the finance and legal tracks seem to be for people who are expected to die at
45, like some weird victorian dystopia.

~~~
burlesona
I think about this a lot as well. My wife and I decided to have our first
child at 30, which is fairly early compared to our peers. Economically it
would have been better to wait, we’ve each had career opportunities we
couldn’t take advantage of because of having children, and if somehow we could
have waited until 40 I think we would have had an easier time economically.

But, physically and emotionally, I wish we could have had kids at 22 or so. Of
course we hadn’t even met so this is pure wishful thinking. But still. Raising
a family is a real joy, but it’s also very physically demanding (even for
men), and the younger you are the easier the physical aspect is. Also, we know
a small number of people who had children very young, and now in their 40s
their children are grown. It’s a really fascinating relationship, with
somewhat more ability to relate to each other and a really cool ability to
live life together. Especially when this is across generations, it’s amazing
to have an extended family with three generations not just alive but still
well.

I have no idea how society could ever adjust to make something like that work
out - I think it might be easier to “fix fertility” to give more people the
option of starting a family in their 40s. But still, I wonder about it often.

~~~
lordnacho
If the economy permitted it, the dating market would reflect that and you'd
more easily find someone at a young age.

Just like it used to be.

~~~
kkarakk
Nah economy is just one part of the puzzle, society has moved on from the "you
need to have kids to live a full life" mentality too. Good luck finding an
interesting career driven woman who wants kids at 20 something.

Also, imo- for the most part kids degrade life experience significantly before
they improve it, often in the part of your lifespan that you can actually
enjoy life the most. Are you going to be taking risks and travelling to far
flung countries in your 40-50s? most probably not by choice.

Hanging out with my kids at 40 isn't gonna happen even if i had chosen to have
kids. Kids nowadays will be in school/tutoring programs/hanging out on social
media not have time for me as a father to teach them outdated cultural
mores(that they will ignore anyways just like i did).

~~~
lordnacho
But those attitudes are also a result of the state of the economy?

------
tylermenezes
I think it's still a form of sexism to assume women are the ones who need to
care for a child. That's something that very few diversity-in-STEM folks are
really thinking about.

Many years ago an ex-girlfriend, who works in STEM academia (and is otherwise
a liberal, progressive feminist), expressed concerns similar to the author
about having kids. When I brought up that it wasn't written in stone that she
would need to be the primary caregiver, she said she'd never even thought of
the alternative!

(Anne-Marie Slaughter touched on this in a 2012 Atlantic article called "Why
Women Still Can't Have It All" for anyone who's interested.)

~~~
hyperdunc
Women are more likely to want to be the primary caregiver to something that
actually came out of them. It's biological and there's nothing sexist about
it.

~~~
tylermenezes
> it's biological

"It's biology" has a long history of being used to justify everything from
sexism to racism to genocide. Please provide a source for your claim (and for
the implied claim that men do not have the same drive).

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
The source is looking at nature and all the species?

But that doesn't mean we, the smartest of them all, can't make some changes.
Nature is also killing the weaker etc, things that we don't agree on as
humans.

------
dustinmoris
Maybe some people value spending time with their children and seeing them grow
up more than chasing a stupid meaningless promotion at a mundane STEM job
somewhere. If you have one child then you have only one chance in life to
answer all their curious questions when they are 6 years old, only one chance
in life to see them learn how to swim, etc. etc.

Life is about collecting wonderful memories with the people who you love, not
about maintaining some idiotic excel spreadsheets in an open plan office.
Maybe we should measure how many women are happy with their life rather than
measure how many of them have a certain job title in a certain field. If we
can maximise the former then who gives a shit about the latter.

~~~
falcor84
>Maybe we should measure how many women are happy with their life rather than
measure how many of them have a certain job title in a certain field. If we
can maximise the former then who gives a shit about the latter.

Because if women don't participate in the industry, the men who do will
continue building a world designed for men.

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-
world-built-for-men-car-crashes)

------
dcole2929
A lot of people would argue, imo correctly, that this is just a different form
of sexism. The idea that progressing in your career means sacrificing
work/life balance and more importantly family could absolutely be construed as
the end result of a sexist mind state that doesn't value motherhood and family
rearing to the degree it should. Obviously this affect men who want to be
present and active participants in their children's lives as well, but as the
author points out in many cases the inflection point at which ones career can
really take off also overlaps with prime childbearing years.

There is a lot of pressure on woman to have families and in circumstances
where their right and ability to both do that and progress in their careers
isn't respected and protected we end up with the current system. One in which
woman drop out of less flexible fields earlier, and even in them don't get
promoted as fast as their male counterparts who don't need to bow out of the
field for months at a time to have a child.

~~~
knorker
It's sexism that the more time and effort you put into your career the more
you're progressing?

I don't disagree with most you said, but if you weren't there then no amount
of artificial thinking will compensate for that.

------
bArray
I think people have been hinting towards the point that it's generally
maternity and not sexism that mostly creates the differences in career
progression. Of course there was a time in history where sexism played a major
role, but I think that in modern times this is mostly gone (although I know of
recent cases).

We can take several actions to balance the books, but the important point I
would like to ask is: Do we really want to stop/de-incentivize intelligent
women from having children and having an active role on raising them?

Of course there are lots of compromises that can be made to balance the work-
home life, but ultimately a decision does need to be made. Spending time with
your children in those crucial fundamental years before pre-school is
incredibly important and rewarding.

~~~
howling
I think people are arguing that to be fair, time spent on raising children
should be shared equally between father and mother.

~~~
toasterlovin
Time spent raising children should be shared in a way that the parents
mutually agree on. Society has no legitimate interest in which gender does the
work, as long as it's a mutually agreed to arrangement that both parties are
equally happy with (or, probably more accurately, equally least-unsatisfied
with).

~~~
badfrog
> Society has no legitimate interest in which gender does the work

That's not really true. If all women chose to raise children instead of
working, many products would have poorer design due to lack of diversity in
ideas. And if 95% of women chose not to work, the 5% who want to work will
have a harder time in many respects.

~~~
toasterlovin
> And if 95% of women chose not to work, the 5% who want to work will have a
> harder time in many respects.

Why should the preferences of the 5% override the preferences of the 95%? A
widespread norm of two incomes per household makes it much harder for women to
be homemakers and full time mothers (since single income households have to
compete with dual income households for positional goods like housing).

~~~
badfrog
> A widespread norm of two incomes per household

That is not the only alternative to a male-dominated workforce.

------
HammockWarrior
Seems like much of the problem could be solved by just having the working
world chill the f' out for women and for men. For example, a 32 hour workweek
along with generous _paid_ parental leaves. _Everyone_ should have time for a
life outside of work, not just women of childbearing age.

Also, The whole idea of having young people work like dogs in order to have a
shot at making partner, or gaining tenure, or gaining a medical degree is both
outdated and ageist.

~~~
virtuous_signal
32 hour workweeks might work but there will always be the issue of
_defection_.

If a company allows employees to take unlimited leave, then worker A who
avails him/herself of it, will be at a disadvantage to worker B who keeps
working like a dog, when it comes time for promotions.

If company A mandates 32 hour workweeks, then they will eventually lose out to
their competitor company B who mandates 40 hours (or more informally).

If country A says ALL companies must have <=32 hour workweeks, then country B,
with no such law, will become more productive. And on and on. There will
always be some less enlightened competitor to take advantage -- and do we
really think America is ready to stop being #1?

~~~
asdff
That assumes that working like a dog is more efficient than having a 3 day
weekend and free time to interact with your family and coming back in on
monday fresh and alert.

It also assumes that workers A and B both working 40 hours (or more
informally) are both working like dogs, trying to earn a promotion before the
other. This is definitely true in some fields like finance, but not all.

The last assumption is that there is no economic benefit to added free time.
Where would we be if the world was solely workers who didn't have the free
time to engage with their own thoughts? We certainly wouldn't be on this
website, or a computer for that matter.

We aren't computers with a job queue that can be maximized. We are animals
that get exhausted easily, distrust our own warning signs, and have been known
to do foolish things like jump from buildings if an artificial number dips
below some arbitrary level. I think we can all afford to slow down just a
little.

~~~
therealdrag0
> That assumes that working like a dog is more efficient

Naw. Efficiency is only one variable. Working like a dog is usually marginally
inefficient, but the first 6 hr/day are still roughly as efficient to the
3-day-weekend-er. Working more hours absolutely increases productivity even if
per-hour-productivity decreases (except in extreme cases of burn out). This is
pretty obvious when you look at how any high-achiever spends their time. It's
amazing how often people claim the opposite on HN.

------
oefrha
> We spend billions of dollars training women in STEM. By not making full use
> of their skills, if we look at only the american economy, we are wasting
> about $1.5 billion USD per year in economic benefits they would have
> produced if they stayed in STEM. So here’s a business proposal: ...

With all due respect, I don’t understand this call to action. Faculty position
is basically a zero sum game. If more women end up as faculty, fewer men will.
So, unless it costs more to train women than men, I doubt any “investment”
would be saved (and that’s not the point of gender equality anyway).

Btw, this maternal wall idea is nothing new. I talked to my mother about
gender inequality in hiring many years ago and she was quick to point this out
(didn’t call it “maternal wall” though).

~~~
pgeorgi
> With all due respect, I don’t understand this call to action. Faculty
> position is basically a zero sum game. If more women end up as faculty,
> fewer men will. So, unless it costs more to train women than men, I doubt
> any “investment” would be saved

The assumption is that aptitude for these positions is roughly the same
between genders, so if there's a significant imbalance, society doesn't get
the best people on the given set of seats.

The later calculation is along the lines of "society is pouring so much money
both into these positions and into getting-women-into-STEM programs without
reaching this supposed goal, so here's a counter-proposal to use this money
more wisely"

> Btw, this maternal wall idea is nothing new.

She's quite upfront that she borrowed the term as well, so the idea can't be
new. But it might be time to reiterate that point (as opposed to the popular
reduction of the problem to sexism only), and since she did a good job (IMHO)
to collect sources...

~~~
allovernow
>The assumption is that aptitude for these positions is roughly the same
between genders, so if there's a significant imbalance, society doesn't get
the best people on the given set of seats.

An assumption which I have to point out is absolutely not verified. In fact,
there are mountains of circumstantial, statistical, and biological evidence to
the contrary - which policy makers in the west are increasingly ignoring as
they ram gender parity down industry's and academia's collective throats,
possibly to the detriment of the institutions and society at large.

~~~
AlexCoventry
There's no biological evidence to the contrary, and the statistical,
circumstantial evidence can all be convincingly explained by the kinds of
structural issues raised in the OP.

~~~
allovernow
Are you sure about that? Consider the following non-inclusive list:

1\. Differences in hormonal expression and response affecting behavior and
interests, e.g. testosterone and competitiveness (biological)

2\. Measured differences in performance in different types of intelligence,
e.g. spatial reasoning (statistical)

3\. Consistent differences in achievement and specialization between men and
women across almost all societies and all of human history (circumstantial)

The truth may be inconvenient but the idea that men and women are on average
equally suited to all tasks doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

~~~
deyouz
If you are going to claim something as harmful as that, I want you to present
clear evidence and peer reviewed studies to support your claims.

What you were suggesting is that men are better than women at STEM. Simplg
saying men have more testosterone doesn't cut it as evidence. (Besides,
competitiveness doesn't make you a better researcher or employee, and can even
be harmful in a team).

I also need data for the number 2 in that list. At what are men better at than
women by a significant ammount? And how does that thing relates to STEM?

And number 3 doesn't prove absolutely anything. Women were subjugated throught
history and basically no opportunity to do anything. Even with their limited
possibilities, you still have women like Hatshepsut, Ada Lovelace, Marie
Currie, Sappho, Ann Lister, Hypathia of Alexandria, etc. And now that they are
finally allowed in higher education they outperfom men in terms of degree
gained. So there is clearly not something that holds them back from studying.
If they have the ability to get a PhD, then they can also be good researchers.
Simple as that.

If you are going to continue with this subtle sexist talk (implying men are
better than women at STEM), I want clear examples. Thanks.

~~~
allovernow
Start here [1]. This is delving dangerously close to flame war territory, so I
probably won't respond further. But I'd like to point out that because of
attitudes like this

>If you are going to continue with this subtle sexist talk (implying men are
better than women at STEM)

You're probably unlikely to find too much on the subject - it's dangerous to
academic careers to even propose research which could potentially justify any
aspects of classical sexism. I'd just like to point out three things:

1\. You're aware of the massive differences in physical capabilities, on
average, between men and women, right? Which make men and women better suited,
on average, to certain tasks? Why would sexually dimorphic specialization stop
above the shoulders?

2\. This isn't about inferiority, it's about specialization over thousands of
generations. We see it in practically every other sexually reproducing
species. The fact that humans have some ability to override instinct doesn't
preclude gendered differences in average behavior.

3\. This doesn't say anything about individual ability. We are talking about
distribution statistics. What that means is that differences in _average_
performance lead to different proportional representations in various fields.
That doesn't justify discrimination or mistreatment, but it does suggest that,
say, forcing gender parity in industry is unrealistic and potentially harmful.

1\. [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/male-
female/201910/m...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/male-
female/201910/men-s-advantages-in-spatial-cognition-mechanical-reasoning)

~~~
rixed
Regarding 1: Sexual dymorphism in hominids is not regarded as large compared
to other close primates. I don't know where you take this opinion that
physical abilities between males and women are "massive", but certainly not
from actual measurements. Here are some, conveniently in a single table, for
those interested:

[https://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect13dimorph.h...](https://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect13dimorph.html)

(Note: We are homo sapiens, pan troglodites is our closest relative still
alive the social ape chimpanzee, pongo pygmaeus is the solitary orangutan,
gorilla gorilla is the small group living usual gorilla, others are extinct
relatives)

~~~
allovernow
Ok, I know I said I probably wouldn't comment further, but the extent to which
people will bend over backwards to deny reality is, frankly, infuriating.

If you narrow your definition of sexual dimorphism to body mass, as in your
link, then sure, the difference isn't huge relative to other primates. But
even a cursory internet search produces results which absolutely,
unequivocally demonstrate that physical performance of males across all
measures of strength and endurance is in a league far above that of females,
both trained and untrained. By some metrics, like grip strength, the bottom
10th percentile of males outperform the upper 90th percentile of females.
Female records for 100m sprints are regularly beaten by teenage boys. Men are
approximately 50% stronger on average in measures of both upper and lower body
strength - and the gap widens enormously among elite athletes. Lung capacity,
injury resistance, training response - I could go on, but I would say that
this is more than enough to fit the definition of massive - particularly
considering that in practical terms even trained females compare poorly to
untrained males by most metrics.

Sorry, it may be an uncomfortable truth, but there is simply no ambiguity
regarding the degree of physical specialization among males and females, and
I've yet to come across any compelling evidence that the same specialization
doesn't apply to the brain. In a truth seeking society, this should not be a
controversial topic - the facts are absolutely undeniable, not to mention they
almost universally match anecdotal experience.

~~~
rixed
I am not denying that men have a stronger body than women (endurance is more
debatable though). Part of this difference is biological (as noted by the
table cited in the previous message, which, as you noted rightly, indeed
underestimate the difference by focusing only on body size while it is true
that men's bodies have more muscle than women's), and part of it is cultural
(men do more physical works, more sports, etc).

Physical specialization is obvious to everyone and an "uncomfortable truth" to
no one.

What makes me uncomfortable is how some men use these largely obsolete
differences inherited from a time where childbearing was constraining our
species so much more than today's world where this is a solved problem (like
feeding or keeping ourselves warm) to justify that men with such stronger
muscles must also have a better reasoning and therefore be better in STEM
positions, or leading positions, at taking decisions, at leading people
starting with heading a family, and so on. There is no evidence of this,
neither factual nor anecdotal (actually, anecdotal evidence suggest a negative
correlation between development of muscles and that of brain). This is just
patriarchy, plain and old, aka the ideology behind which men hide their
domination. A domination that is not justified by men having a better brain
but merely by men trying to control women in order to control their body that
they are so dependent of. And this is the real controversial topic in my
opinion.

I'm not comfortable with this ideology despite being a man not only because
I'm ashamed of it, but also as a father of a daughter whom I hope won't be
limited in how she will experience life because the other half of the species
try hard to maintain an obsolete domination, and I sincerely hope she will
kick the ass of all ape-like men thinking that it is "absolutely undeniable"
that more muscles means better brain.

------
azangru
Not related to the thesis of the post, but this:

> And yet, if you ask leading women researchers like Nobel Laureate in Physics
> 2018, Professor Donna Strickland, or Canada Research Chair in Advanced
> Functional Materials (Chemistry), Professor Eugenia Kumacheva, they say that
> sexism was not a barrier in their careers.

— is such a bizarre argument to make. How can one conclude anything about
sexism by asking leading women researchers whether whether it has been a
barrier in their careers. The very fact that they’ve achieved leading
positions says that it wasn’t; it says absolutely nothing of whether it was
for those who have left.

_(I am not claiming anything about sexism; I was simply mystified by this
paragraph)_

~~~
yellowbeard
Good point, this seems like a case of survivorship bias. However, I think it
does seem to show some sort of upper bound on the level and pervasiveness of
sexism? That it's at least _possible_ for women to achieve at the highest
level in these fields means sexism didn't stop everyone.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
But these women did not experience sexism. Of course it wouldn't stop them.

------
throwaway894345
> Heck, let’s spend 99% — $1.485 billion (in the states alone) on better
> support. That should put a dent in the support bill, and I’d sure pick up
> $15 million if I saw it lying around. Wouldn’t you?

According to PEW ([https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/01/09/diversity-in-
the-...](https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/01/09/diversity-in-the-stem-
workforce-varies-widely-across-jobs/)) there were 17M STEM employees in 2016,
so this leaves less than $1000 per employee for childcare. According to
Fortune ([https://fortune.com/2018/10/22/childcare-costs-per-year-
us/](https://fortune.com/2018/10/22/childcare-costs-per-year-us/)) the average
cost per child is $9K/year (probably more if you adjust for the distribution
of STEM careers?). I'm guessing STEM employees have at least one child on
average (some have none, others have multiple, etc), so that only covers about
1/9th of the bill. That's a dent in the bill, but I'm not sure it's enough to
make even a proportional dent in the pipeline.

Note that this assumes the money finances a benefit that must be offered to
all employees; if you can target the women in question, the calculus clearly
changes; however, I suspect that would be difficult under current US
discrimination law (IANAL).

That said, I'd rather that money go to employees where it would certainly be
useful as opposed to the current programs which, as far as I can tell, is
squandered (to put it nicely).

~~~
AlexCoventry
> I suspect that would be difficult under current US discrimination law

What statutes do you believe would stand in the way of an organization
offering excellent daycare services to its employees, as suggested in the OP?

~~~
alexchamberlain
I believe the GP was simply saying you couldn’t only offer it to women.

~~~
throwaway894345
This is correct; that's what I intended to communicate.

------
rudolph9
I wonder how often women in STEM have children with men who earn significantly
less?

I ask because my partner Is a software engineers. She plans on continuing to
work and I plan on staying home with the kids.

Practically speaking it doesn’t totally make sense since I currently earn more
being a few years older in the same career. It’s just what we both have wanted
since we found one another and we’re willing to make the life adjustments
necessary to make it happen

I can’t help wonder how often women partner with men with lower incomes.
Obviously the physical toll of baring children tips the scale a little but
given couple where the woman makes significantly more than her partner I would
imagine the decision would be logical for her to continuing work and wonder
what percentage of women leave stem in this particular subset of the group?

------
daotoad
My only quibble with this article is that the fact that there is a wall
related to child bearing and rearing IS institutional sexism.

It's just a different form of it than the "my coworkers constantly stare at my
tits and don't take what I say seriously" variety.

We've put women largely in charge of child rearing duties. Obviously, men
aren't able to get pregnant and bear children. We are, however, perfectly
capable of changing diapers, singing lullabies, and doing laundry.

I'd bet that we would see the same kind of impediments to women rising to the
tops of their professions in many demanding fields, fields where if you take
too much time to have a life, you are considered broken and uninterested in
excellence.

~~~
jccalhoun
I agree. The article says "What if it isn't sexism?" and then goes on to
describe institutional sexism.

~~~
blub
The absence of the significant additional support required for women to both
have children _and_ get tenure as a professor is not sexism. That support was
never there in the first place and men don't get any support either, so there
is no discrimination happening.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
The author is missing the forest for the trees. She argues that a specific
kind of sexism (harrassment) is not sufficient to explain why so many women
are forced out of their careers in STEM academia. She argues that the real
reason is that those women want to start a family and they can't do both at
once. She herself is considering leaving academia to start a family (she wants
to have two or three children). Yet she never for a moment stops to wonder why
it is that a woman like her has to make a choice between family and career,
why that is a choice that so many women have to make and why it is a choice
that so few men have to make. The answer to all that is sexism, of course, the
kind of sexism that the author is so used to she doesn't even consider it
sexism anymore, just the normal order of things. Yes, of course a young,
talented researcher _has_ to leave academia to raise her kids. Because she's a
woman. And that's what happens to women.

That is sexism. It is clear sexism, it is classic sexism and it will not go
away by pretending that it is not. And I agree very much with the author that
it is the real reason behind the constant stream of promising female
researchers leaving STEM academia.

~~~
hanniabu
Probably going to get downvoted for this, but how exactly is this sexism? It
seems to be just plain old biology.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
How is it biology that only women are expected to leave work to care for
children? I don't follow. Is there some biological reason why men are not
expected to do the same?

Do you mean something else by the "it" in "It seems to be just plain old
biology"?

~~~
tasogare
You are missing purposely the fact that women have to bear the child, which is
quite incapacitating especially in the last months. Then there is a recovery
period. All in all that already about a year.

So yes, it’s totally normal that the expectation of caring for children fall
on women because it is the prolongation of their pregnancy. Actually this is
not even disputed except by a minority of people in a minority of countries
(the Western world).

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
So you are talking about leaving work to give birth and recover from it? That
indeed is required, but I'm talking about leaving work to _raise_ the children
that one gives birth to.

I'm saying that it's only women who leave work to _raise_ their children and
that _that_ is sexist. There is no reason to abandon your career to raise your
children, there is no reason that this is never done by men (who can do it
just as well as women because it does not involve special biological
characteristics) and there is no reason that women are expected to do it.

In the western world of course we have such things as maternal leave and in
some countries even _parental_ leave which is an attempt at a solution to
exactly the problem we're discussing here: that women are expected to leave
their careers _permanently_ to raise their children even though they only need
at most a few months or so to recover after giving birth (a year is an
absolute extreme), and that men are not expected to do the same.

EDIT: So, I say "in the western world" but it turns out that's not _all_ the
western world. From wikipedia's article on parental leave:

 _The United States, Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and a few island countries in
the Pacific Ocean are the only countries in the United Nations that do not
require employers to provide paid time off for new parents.[6]_

EDIT 2: "You are missing purposely the fact".

I'm not and I could assume you are wilfully misunderstanding _me_. And where
would that get us?

~~~
hanniabu
> that women are expected to leave their careers _permanently_ to raise their
> children even though they only need at most a few months or so to recover
> after giving birth (a year is an absolute extreme), and that men are not
> expected to do the same

1) This is a conversation concerning those in a relationship as to who will be
raising the child (if it's not a shared effort)

2) I know a few guys that are stay at home dads, share the responsibility with
their spouse of parents, or use caring services and nobody needs to be a stay
at home parent.

3) If they are permanently leaving their career then it sounds like there's
something completely unrelated that's affecting this other than some sexist
issue.

4) How's what you're saying any different than some women expecting the man to
be the bread winner and provide for the family? Or expecting them to be the
one to defend the family if there's an intruder in the house? Or expecting the
guy to fix things around the house or be the one to hire a contractor to do
it? Or expecting the guy to take the garbage out or change a tire or talk to
their son about sex, etc.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Yes, some (many? few? I don't know) women do have that kind of expectation
from a man. More to the point, there are societal norms that nurture those
expectations in women and in men themselves. There's no question to my mind
that this is exactly the same kind of sexism that is keeping women from having
successful careers in STEM academia (and elsewhere).

Like I say in another comment, sexism harms men too.

It really is not a matter of men-vs-women, here. My understanding is that
these are traditional ideas about manhood and womanhood, that were useful in
the past because they helped ensure societal stability and perhaps a sensible
use of limited resources. But, in today's world, especially in the Western
world, where the majority of men and women don't e.g. have to work the fields
or do the washing by hand, these traditional ways of seeing each other only
help to restrict our options. In the end, most women and most men have loved
ones in the other sex (wives, sisters, mothers, daughters, husbands, sons,
brothers and fathers) and it just doesn't make sense to stick to archaic ideas
that want us to be somehow adversaries. Most women want the men they love to
do well in their life and vice-versa. So why not work to maximise each other's
options, rather than restrict them? We can work together rather than against
each other to achieve our full potential, as individuals and as family units.

------
m0zg
The fundamental unaddressed issue in our society is that having children is
treated as something that's optional, a luxury, and even though the society
fundamentally depends on its constituents procreating, we continue to pretend
that having children is not a necessary part of one's life. Which is true
individually, but not true on the macro level.

Anecdotally, observing my own family and that of my (mostly well-off STEM)
social circle, I can tell you that this is when women really take a hit
career-wise. What's less obvious in the graphs is that many of them take it
deliberately, and _choose_ to focus on things other than career. This,
ironically, puts pressure on men to provide, and compete in the workplace. I
know it put pressure on me like you wouldn't believe - we "settled", got a
mortgage, monthly expenses went through the roof. I've roughly tripled my
earnings between the time my son was born and his 10th birthday. It came at a
tremendous personal cost - I basically didn't have a life for a decade, and
our marriage nearly fell apart. I like where we are today, though, thanks to
all that effort. My wife took a couple of years off work, and did not aim for
a quick career progression afterwards, preferring lower stress and more family
time. Was my career progression done at the expense of someone less motivated
at work? Quite likely, yes. Was it worth it to my family? It was, although
there were many times when I was in doubt about that.

This is something the workforce percentage graphs do not communicate at all.

------
WalterBright
Before modern times, the grandparents fulfilled much of the role of watching
the kids while the moms worked. In fact, some have posited that this is why
humans live long enough to be grandparents - it's an evolutionary advantage.

But in modern society, we tend to cast off our grandparents.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Or we move 3,000 miles away to somewhere more economically prosperous (and
also, more expensive) so the grandparent's couldn't financially make it viable
to come with.

All of my parents grew up and lived in the same state as their siblings. All
of my siblings live in different states, and none of us live in the same state
as our parents.

My siblings and I don't have any kids yet, but their family life and amount of
time they spend with extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins) will look
dramatically different than my experience, and it's only been ~25 or so years.

~~~
tzs
> Or we move 3,000 miles away to somewhere more economically prosperous (and
> also, more expensive) so the grandparent's couldn't financially make it
> viable to come with

Judging from my neighborhood at least, the answer to that seems to be the
grandparents get a class A RV [1] or a large travel trailer [2] and move to
their kid's lawn for a few months to help with the grandkids.

Probably only can reasonably work, though, if the kids wait until they have a
home and decent sizes lawn to have kids of their own.

[1] [https://www.fleetwoodrv.com/models/pace-
arrow-1](https://www.fleetwoodrv.com/models/pace-arrow-1)

[2] [https://www.rvusa.com/rv-guide/specs-by-
model-2019-heartland...](https://www.rvusa.com/rv-guide/specs-by-
model-2019-heartland-mallard-travel-trailer-m5666-y2019-t5)

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
This also only works if your grandparents are in good enough shape to live in
a trailer, and, also, you have a lawn, which many people living in multi-
family housing do not have exclusive access to.

------
naiveprogrammer
I appreciate the author's piece but motherhood is not an alternative argument
for why women leave STEM, it is THE argument. It is, in all likelihood, the
strongest factor to influence women's decisions to leave the field. The
evidence is getting overwhelming, just check the most recent publications by
Harvard Professor Claudia Goldin (most recent:
[https://test.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/113672/version/...](https://test.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/113672/version/V1/view))

Sexism is real but its importance is far from being large. It is really
tiresome to see the news regurgitating the talking point on wage gap without
properly giving context.

What is clear to me is that the wage gap as measured by the average earnings
by gender (even drilled down by field) is very hard to be fixed given the
obvious biological differences between males and females (in which motherhood
reigns supreme).

Women also need to be honest about their prospects, it is very hard to juggle
a career and motherhood. You can't have your cake and eat it too. So there
needs to be an honest confrontation on the trade offs of motherhood and having
a career and the cope that comes with it.

~~~
proc0
Yes, this is what I was thinking. Feminism is ruining women by mistakenly
telling them they want something that might make them unhappy. What do women
gain by having 50% professional nuclear physicists or 50% coal miners?

------
proc0
Why do we care that there are equal women and men again? Why does
representation actually matter again? I would find it more exciting to see a
field with no representation because I could make a greater impact! This whole
ideology of having representation everywhere is very dumb and conformist.

~~~
Nouser76
Because diverse opinions lead to better end products. Having homogenized
groups of people means you're leaving some viewpoints out, and those
viewpoints have sometimes been extremely helpful for me as a software
developer.

~~~
proc0
Sure, however this isn't false otherwise. Non-diverse opinions aren't bad by
default, and ultimately the main concern here is thinking the opposite, that
diverse opinions are always right.

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
It's an error to assume any opinion is always right. Ultimately institutional
sex discrimination is counter-productive to human life, so you will generally
see a higher quality of life, lower violence, better health outcomes, reduced
chemical toxicity, in places where both sexes have equal social mobility.

------
JDiculous
Great article, and the same dynamic applies to all genders. I was listening to
a podcast the other day where a founder said that the most successful people
he knew (eg. entrepreneurs) all had the worst family lives - multiple
marriages, bad or non-existent relationships with family, etc.

Work and family is a trade-off, their is no way around it. One can live a
balanced life and be moderately successful. But to be among the best, the most
elite, something generally has to give.

That's not to say that we can't reform the systems to not make it as "winner-
take-all", sort of like how the author suggested.

------
tus88
> women leave the field at a rate 3 to 4 times greater than men, and in
> particular, if they do not obtain a _faculty position quickly_

Wait what....you mean by STEM you just meant academia?

~~~
cpitman
Exactly my confusion with this article. I have multiple female friends who
have earned doctorates in STEM who have either left or are planning on leaving
academia to go to industry. However, they are still all going into STEM jobs!

So maybe the problem is that industry STEM is offering an overall better
benefits package than academia? We're seeing the same thing in fields like AI,
where academia can't retain top talent.

------
epicgiga
Maybe they're just not as into it?

Does anyone ever stop to consider that? Maybe women are doing what's best for
themselves, sticking to things they like, and screw your arrogant western
leftist ideas of what YOU think they should do?

Let's just pretend women like shoes and handbags more and men like engines and
guns more just for purely random reasons. Despite global perpetuity.
Everywhere ever.

Let's just pretend engineers and nurses is inflicted, not chosen, despite what
ultra high gender equality Scandinavia says.

Let's all pretend that only the North Koreans are brainwashed and that only
they care little for facts and human flourishing.

Let's all just slosh in wierd western religious fervour. Or actually, how
about no, and hop on a plane to the civilised world.

~~~
alexithym
This was an unnecessarily aggressive comment, and the tone with which it was
made detracts greatly from the intended message.

~~~
epicgiga
Fair, but calmly worded reason hasn't budged these bunch or their regime for
decades, so "repeating the experiment" etc

------
chadlavi
So... it's not sexism, it's the structurally sexist way that child-rearing is
handled?

I mean, it's a more actionable level of detail, but it's still sexism, no?
Just maybe more structural rather than at the level of individual hiring or
advancing decisions?

~~~
epicureanideal
I think a larger percentage of society would be willing to call this
"structural gender-based inequality" rather than sexism, because most people
including myself use the word "sexism" to refer to a belief that one sex is
less capable or somehow worse than the other.

Similarly, men live fewer years than women, and so receive less retirement
benefits. This is a structural gender-correlated inequality (maybe gender-
correlated is even better than gender-based) but I don't think many people
would call it "sexism against men". They would just say "oh, yeah, that's
odd... maybe we should adjust that now that you've brought it to our
attention".

~~~
badfrog
Your framing seems to suggest the entities that established the unequal
structure are blameless, which I do not think is the case. The leave policies
and overall working environments that most of us have came from the belief
that men should be dedicated to work and women should stay at home. Whether
the people who established these norms had malicious intent or not, they were
incorrect and harmed society.

~~~
chadlavi
This

------
jackcosgrove
I have always been skeptical of the need for the intense career paths in
management, law, medicine, finance, and academics. I totally understand the
need to put in hours to become an expert, but a lot of it seems gratuitous. I
wouldn't call it hazing. I think these careers are structured as championship
systems, where the winner takes all, for the sake of the winner.

Winner takes all is a very male attitude, and I think it gets back to men
being more expendable because their sexual refractory period is orders of
magnitude shorter than women's.

But does it make sense? Does the 80th hour on the ward as a resident make you
a better doctor? Does the fifth publication make you a better professor? Does
another fifteen minutes of billable time make you a better lawyer?

I don't think they do. I think these careers are needlessly intense and
stupidly so. I contemplated going down a couple of those paths and recoiled
because it seemed so unnecessary and gratuitous, and I didn't want to spin my
wheels fitting into a nonsensical system.

------
belorn
Why not look at how we are all similar rather than a unique attribute to
explain the leaky pipe?

The Swedish government order a study a few years ago in order to explain why
the teacher profession are so gender segregated. The study found that
initially the applications are almost 50/50 men and women, but then every year
men start to leave. Once graduated and starting to work, every year men are a
few times more likely to leave the profession than women. They even called it
a leaky pipe.

They had multiple explanation in order to explain it, like how more academic
focus rather than pedagogic helps retain men, and how higher salaries might
help, and they also did similar to this study and asked the men who left why
they did so. A lot of answers were that the profession did not fit their life,
they felt the environment to be alien and uncomfortable, and they didn't feel
like they fit in the work culture.

What the study also found was that the remaining male teacher that did stay
tended to enter specialties such as PE and STEM subject, and away from
subjects like langue and social studies. Many who left did so for similar
profession outside of the education system such as sport.

So here we have women and men, both being described as a leaky pipe, both
leaving at similar rates, both describing similar reasons for leaving, both
finding specialties where they are not a minority. Could there be a common
theory rather than two separate theories to explain this?

And the government study had such suggestion. There is research that is now
about 50 years old that observed that people who are in an environment as a
minority does not feel same confidence in themselves as those being part of
the majority. When faced with a failure such as a missed exam, and making a
decision to continue, being part of a majority increase the probability of the
person continuing. The government study suggested that if you apply this
theory over the time frame of a teacher career from the point of student to
being a long term employee, what you get is a leaky pipe. It also suggested
the solution that mentor ship programs helps in reducing this.

I also recall that a while back a women in IT imitative that said that of all
their work, what had actually produced results was their mentor program. Seems
like a pretty good evidence to me, and as a universal theory it seems pretty
good explanation to explain the situation for both men and women.

------
jkingsbery
I'm totally on board with making changes that address concerns for women
specifically.

That being said, as someone not in academia, it seems like a crazy path for
anyone, male or female. As the article said, you're usually 34 before you have
a lab established and the research program really gets going. Is there any way
the system could be changed/simplified so that talented researchers could
start earlier?

------
choeger
As a male that dropped out of the academic career path I can absolutely
confirm that the author has a point. I made the conscious decision not to
attempt to become a professor because it would be nearly impossible for my
wife to have a qualified career at the same time due to the required
flexibility. Add children to the mix and you are pretty much confined to a
single-career family. Which would be arguable if it wasn't for the extremely
high risk if that particular career path.

------
scarmig
One tactical approach: a high achieving woman could prioritize finding a
partner who is interested in deprioritizing his own career for the sake of
supporting her and raising children. This is a strategy high achieving men
have used for a long time.

So, pursue men involved in "child friendly" careers. Nurses instead of
doctors; teacher aides over academics; tax preparers over management
consultants. Or even men who are passionate about the idea of being a stay at
home dad.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
The dating marketplace is two-sided; one reason why high-achieving men use
this strategy is because there are a lot of women in this niche competing for
high-achieving men. There aren't nearly as many men in this niche competing
for high-achieving women, likely in part because there are relatively fewer
high-achieving women using this strategy.

A big part of strategy in marketplaces is choosing something that has a lot of
participation so that you can find enough counter-parties to make your
strategy work.

There's also a biological asymmetry in terms of age and fertility. A man who
is single until age 45 and then gets a lot of economic success can marry a
younger woman and have children.

~~~
scarmig
I'd put good money on this being a demand side issue, though I can't think of
a great way to quantify it for meaningful comparisons.

------
e12e
Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems to be typical sexism: there's work
at work which is paid, and work at home which is not. Men do little enough of
the latter, that doing the paid work isn't a problem. Women do such a large
part of the former, that they feel the need to chose between which part get
done.

Sure, the positive way to change this, is to reduce the unpaid work (child
care professionals are paid, cleaners are paid etc) - that is, to acknowledge
it as work that needs to be done, is productive, and should be part of what
society rewards/share resources to get done.

But the equal rights / equal opportunity path indicates that we also need a
(bigger) culture shift so that the unpaid work of running a home is more
equally divided.

~~~
jfengel
It's notable that in general, even when paid, "women's work" is less valuable
than men's work. The younger a student is, the more likely they are to be
taught by a woman, and the less they are likely to make -- but is teaching a
high schooler harder than teaching a first grader? Cleaning, child care, and
nursing are all both female-coded and low-paying.

Women are often pushed towards professions involving some kind of care -- and
it's expected that they'll want it because they have an emotional attachment
rather than for money. Being a homemaker is the limit case: absolute
attachment and zero pay.

I wonder what would happen if we simply made the purely numerical correction
of counting homemaking in GDP. Would we value it more? Would it make it more
attractive to men? Would we develop better infrastructure?

~~~
PeterisP
I'm not seeing much of a push for women there, but more of a push of men out
of there, or satisfying different criteria.

The behavioral stereotype that I'm seeing is that when a man considers a job
that they might like, that has some socially acceptable status (teacher is
considered a respectable profession compared to running a garbage truck, at
least for an educated middle class family) but that pays lousy, then they more
often than not discard that option as unacceptable and taboo and go looking
for a job that sucks in other aspects but pays better e.g. driving a truck or
building houses; women in the same situation more often than not stick around
with lower pay.

If a stereotypical man needs to choose between money and reasonable hours that
are compatible with seeing your family, they tend to choose money, the
sterotypical woman often chooses the opposite (part of which is the argument
in this article for the years after childbirth). A particular local example
that I see is that the municipal public transport drivers are mostly women and
long-range (both scheduled traffic and tourist trip) bus drivers around here
are mostly men. The municipal transport pays much less, so men don't apply
there; but the long-range drivers work obscene hours and are away from their
families for most nights, so women (who have the needed experience
qualifications since they're driving the same machine, just locally) don't
apply there - there's a self selection.

In management, we can observe a pattern of increasing divorce rates (for the
same age) as men reach higher levels of management; suggesting that there may
be a pattern that when choosing between a possibility of promotions and not
wrecking up your marriage, more men choose to prioritize their work and more
women choose to prioritize their home life (which IMHO is the sane choice).
The same applies for physical health - women tend to avoid many of the
physical jobs that screw up your body or risk your life. E.g. roofing is a job
that can be done well by women, but is one of the more lethal jobs in USA -
and it has about 0.5% women in there. It's not a well paying job comparing to
skilled jobs (e.g. a registered nurse) but it pays significantly more than
childcare, but we're not seeing the poorly paid women in childcare joining up
roofing just for the money.

Also, if a stereotypical middle class man needs to choose between doing a
lower class job and sufficient money, they often choose sufficient money; the
stereotypical middle class woman chooses otherwise. I have an observation from
some time when our local economy was doing badly - if a man can't get a
respectable job that can sustain their family, they'll often get a
'disrespectable' job below their skills or even occasionally commit suicide if
they fail. On the other hand, women actually do overwhelmingly continue work
in female-coded low-paying jobs like you describe even if other options exist;
e.g. we had a local situation many years ago when schoolteachers were very,
very poorly paid, but a construction boom (or bubble) had a big need for all
kinds of workers. This resulted in almost all male teachers leaving schools
and getting construction jobs, including very many that don't have a strength
or skill requirement as e.g. painters, and very few female teachers did so
(though I know some), resulting in the gender gap in school teaching becoming
even more extreme. The same happened for university students picking their
course subjects - because of the known problems with teacher pay, boys
absolutely refused to study pedagogy degrees, with the gender ratio dropping
from something like 30/70 to 1/99, but girls still enlisted. Another local
observation is that boys treat the local med school entry conditions as all or
nothing - if they can't get in to the doctor's "full medicine" study track,
they refuse to go to med school at all and do something else; but girls who
apply tend to choose both "full medicine" track and nursing as options, so if
they want to be doctors but don't make the cut they consider the lower paying
carreer path as acceptable. For career paths that pay poorly at the bottom and
well at the top, young men will face an 'up or out' pressure from their
families; if it doesn't seem that they'll reach the "good paying" level, then
they'll be pressured to drop out of the career and do something menial but
better paying; while for women its considered acceptable to stay there and
hope to get supported by a spouse.

I could go on and on, but I've probably made my point - there seems to be a
difference in preferences in job market. For men, decent pay compared to
alternatives is a 'hygiene factor', and they'll sacrifice all kinds of other
important job factors (hours, prestige, office vs outdoors, risk and health,
family balance, abusive conditions) in order to avoid getting stuck in an
otherwise decent but low-paying carreer. For a man, intentionally choosing the
low-money path is essentially taboo, their family and society will shun them
for that and push them towards various tracks where decent money can be made;
but for a woman, it's not so, so they stay in low-paying areas that are
otherwise rewarding.

------
jacobwilliamroy
My dad spent almost all of my waking childhood at work and I still feel really
sad and hurt about that. I suspect everyone has similar repressed resentment
towards their providers, and professionals should really consider that when
they're planning their families.

------
AndrewKemendo
There is no explicitly agreed upon objective function for humanity. However
there is kind of a default one baked into our DNA and it's the desire to
reproduce and see our offspring reproduce.

Modern society is conflicted however because enlightenment philosophy, which
is baked into everything, as well as some Eastern traditions teaches us that
knowledge or enlightenment is the highest virtue.

So when it comes to agreeing on how to align society from the perspective of
governance, time allocation, what to promote socially etc.. we have this
existential crisis where people try to saddle the fence between reproduction
(aka "family") and enlightenment style "progress."

------
amb23
Mothers--the vast majority of mothers, not the aristocracic ones we model our
current family structures off of--have always worked. They'd strap the baby on
their back and go to the fields to plow or gather the harvest or cook or weave
or chop firewood. Motherhood as as a full-time job is a modern invention;
historically, it was a side gig.

I'd love to see a startup tackle this problem: think a benefits platform that
allows companies to offer daycare as a benefit, or a Wonderschool-like daycare
for working parents. Even an improved work from home policy for new parents
would go a long way to plugging the talent "leak" that's prevalent right now.

~~~
tathougies
Daycare isn't an appropriate analogue to your example though. A shift in
culture that allows you to bring your children to work would be and would be
absolutely sensible for white collar and several blue collar jobs.

~~~
deyouz
No... that's madness. A child has no place in the workplace. The child would
just disrupt the day of the workers and slow them down.

~~~
icandoit
A running car would be equally disruptive I think.

I have worked at places that paid for convenient nearby parking.

I worked at a university that had a daycare just across the street. Given the
dramatic pay gap between there and elsewhere it must have been sticky enough
for some.

------
xerxex
Her argument just shows how entrenched sexism runs in our society.

Anecdotal evidence/sample size one story: My wife has a doctorate in chemistry
and 2 postdocs under her belt, but she had to leave her field purely due to
sexism she encountered during her post docs. The PI (her boss) was quite
abusive, outright sexist and a horrible racist. My wife wanted to move on to
industry jobs but her wouldn't let her leave. So he kept giving bad
references. We didn't know about this until after my wife looked into why she
got rejected.

~~~
DreamScatter
Academia is generally abusive, regardless of whether you are male or female.

~~~
xerxex
That's very true...

------
Misdicorl
Academic careers in STEM require almost exclusive focus on your career for the
first two decades of pursuit. This is simply because that is what the
competition does.

My anecdata suggests women are less willing to allow a single aspect of their
lives to entirely dominate over all others. Child bearing happens to be one of
the bigger alternative endeavors, but it's not the only one.

Supporting women (and men!) who want to pursue an academic career in STEM
while raising a family is a laudable goal. I hope it is more effective than I
expect it to be.

------
adjkant
I find it quite interesting that an article focusing on raising children
versus careers uses the word "father" or "man" exactly zero times.

------
steelframe
When I was an engineering manager at one tech company 6 years ago, I fought
like hell to get a woman who had a CS Ph.D. to join my team, and I somehow
pulled that off. Her husband also had a CS degree (B.S. or M.S., not recall
which) and worked for another tech company.

Every time there was a contractor that they needed to have someone at the
house for, or every time their kid got sick and/or couldn't go to school,
guess which of the two of them always took the time off work to handle it?

Now I had no insight into their family dynamics, and it felt it wasn't my
place to pry. But over dozens of "time off" incidents through several years,
it was very clear to me that my female employee was the "default caretaker"
for anything relating to the house or the child that came up. This was despite
the fact that she had a higher-paying position than what he had (based on what
I can now see on levels.fyi).

~~~
nhumrich
While you are very likely correct, your perception could also be biased. If
the father took time, you wouldn't know about it. So from your point of view,
it was always her, but it could have also been only half the time.

------
trynewideas
This is a good model for why women capable of or wanting to have children
leave but won't do much to explain anything to women aren't capable of having
children, or who don't want children, and still can't break past middle
management into product/exec/C-suite roles over younger, less qualified men.

~~~
deyouz
This! Not all women want children/can have children/are straight.

------
tensionhead
This 'scissor diagrams' are a gross misrepresentation of what is really going
on in academia. It conveys the the misleading message that 'the pipeline' is
only leaking for female STEM aspirants. In fact, if you start with 100 woman
and 100 men, so 200 STEM students in total, only around 1-5 people will make
it to the end of these scissor diagrams (professorship and alike). Let's
assume a very strong imbalance, say we have 4 man and 1 woman making it
(80/20). That means the drop out rate (or 'leakiness') is 96% for men and 99%
for woman! So yes, in this case it is 4 times as likely for a man to become
professor compared to a woman. However, it's still very unlikely (4%) for an
individual man to succeed and hence the majority of men also drop out of STEM
academia.

------
klyrs
I'm not a fan of this title. Throughout the piece, sexism is regarded as a key
factor. The thesis of the article, and indeed the article's title, suggests
that sexism isn't the _only_ factor. This isn't an "alternative argument,"
it's another piece to the puzzle.

------
rdlecler1
I wonder if shorter PhD programs, like they have at Oxford might give women
more time in the workforce before they start becoming concerned with starting
a family. Maybe starting earlier puts them in a more senior position at a
younger age.

~~~
scottlocklin
Shorter and fewer Ph.D.s (aka constrain the supply the way the AMA does) would
actually solve all the problems mentioned here. Might even kickstart stalled
scientific and technological development.

~~~
selimthegrim
How do you figure the latter? Redirecting resources elsewhere?

~~~
scottlocklin
One of the possible reasons for lack of progress; too many people. If you look
at something like a consensus algorithm, many work much more slowly with "too
many participants."

Or it could be an insufficiently high IQ test at present; dumb people get in
the way and cause problems.

------
thrower123
I do find it interesting that there is so much focus on academia - it's
probably natural when the the people that are talking and writing about this
are so often academics.

In business, one thing that I have seen a lot of people crash aground on a
reef on is that working in professions that require STEM credentials is a
night-and-day difference from the process that one goes through to acquire
those credentials. I've known a lot of people that loved their computer
science programs in university, and then found actually working as a
programmer such a shock that they noped right out into something else.

------
godelzilla
Pretty sure that the systemic bias against motherhood is a crucial part of
sexism, rather than an alternative explanation.

------
shkkmo
So it seems that in addition to fighting sexism, we need to combat ageism, the
viability of non-standard career paths with breaks, and the friendlines of the
workplace in general to families.

------
billfruit
Perhaps I am feeling more like this an exclusively American problem than a
universal one. For example I suggest to study the situation in India.

Many factors are at play here:

* Most Indians tend to marry young and have kids before 30.

* most families have either one or two kids only.

* Parents support their children for life, i.e, grandparents have a major role in supporting the care and rearing of kids.

* Daycare isn't expensive.

* Government mandated maternity leave with full pay and no loss of seniority.

------
iron0013
I’d love to be wrong, but my gut feeling is that a huge proportion of HN
readers are men—probably even a larger proportion than in the tech industry in
general. It makes it feel kinda weird when these articles the gist of which
are “women are wrong about women’s issues” come up. That applies equally to
the “all men’s problems are women’s fault” articles that seem to be just as
popular around here.

------
ianai
Corporate America largely sucks. Family building and wealth are being attacked
at many levels. I just wanted to add that.

------
pencilcode
I remember seeing, I think in Netflix’s Explained series, that the salary
differences between men and women were the same as the differences between
women with children and women within children, making raising children the
primary cause for the average salary disparities. This article rings true with
that.

------
vondur
I can’t speak for women, but the pay for science degrees kinda sucks. I’m
guessing it would make sense to leave to another field that pays better. My
wife was a bio major and her first real job was selling HPLC columns. She
ended up not liking sales so pivoted into teaching where the pay is decent.

------
RobKohr
This is a societal problem of promoting career instead of family, and delaying
parenthood. In your early 20s, your time is worth so little compared to your
later career, and your parents are young enough to be more involved. Having
children while being an undergraduate is better than when you have an advanced
career, substantial earnings, and little support from parents.

The best time to have kids is when you are getting your undergrad degree.

------
ixtli
> When you ask women why they left, the number one reason they cite is
> balancing work/life responsibilities — which as far as I can tell is a
> euphemism for family concerns.

At least in america women are, in this way, almost always asked to choose
between their career and having children. This is asymmetrical with men's
experience because whether or not they are comfortable with it, its considered
normal for them to spend most of their time at work even if they have a
newborn.

I'm not sure what else you'd call this status quo aside from "sexist." It's a
systemic sexism that has deep roots in how we organize the aesthetics of our
society.

~~~
manfredo
This frames the decision to dedicate more time towards childcare than work as
a something thrust onto women by societal expectation when women would rather
work. Studies indicate that only 20% of women would prefer to work full time
after having a child, with the rest preferring part time work or staying at
home with the children. Furthermore, 70% of women with children that are
currently working full time responded that they would rather be working part
time or not at all [1]. By comparison the majority of men indicate that they
would rather work full time.

Women and men both have to choose between their careers and spending more time
with children, and their choices reflect their preferences. One can make the
argument that this is indirect sexism - that women's preferences stem from
sexist social influence. But the fact remains: most women don't want to work
full time, and the lower rates of women working full time after having
children is reflective of women's preferences.

1\. [https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/3/2010/...](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/3/2010/10/WomenWorking.pdf)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I suspect _given an economic choice_ , many men would prefer not to work full
time either.

For some reason men don't get asked whether or not this is true. It's simply
assumed that men will dedicate their lives to work because it's the only way
to pay for a family.

~~~
manfredo
You don't need to suspect, fathers were polled as well. 72% preferred work
full time, 12% part time, and 16% not working.

------
jariel
The fundamental differentiator between early and late stage in those graphs is
that there are _far fewer positions_ as time moves on, in the 'higher'
cohorts.

It's not people just graduate along the path from A to Z - it's _viciously_
competitive.

Issues of maternity et. al. I think are just one important artefact of the
nature of competition which for whatever reason I think is still going to
favour men. Risk taking, hubris, aggression, physical endurance,
combativeness, a certain kind if confidence, social expectations, possibly
even the acceptance of those things by others - these things mean a lot at
those later stages.

------
jstewartmobile
Brand-new planes that crash, bridges that fall on the first day, the
subordination of computing to advertising and surveillance, iatrogenics,
plastics/xenoestrogens, environmental destruction, species extinction, paper-
upon-paper of non-reproducible p-hacked astroturfing, and this crazy over-
privileged broad is going to whine technocratically over how her gender isn't
proportionally represented in this systematic destruction of nature, beauty,
and civilization?

Break out the tiny violins.

------
throw7
Daycare is not the answer. Not even "High Quality Daycare" (whatever that
means?) is something to be proud of???... unless by "high quality daycare" you
mean a personal nursery next to your executive office.

High quality parenting is the goal. We could provide adequate time off for
anyone wanting to spend their time parenting THEIR child. Will they lose their
job? No. Will they not get a raise or promotion? Yes.

------
tomohawk
> I would presume that if we made academia a more feasible place for a woman
> with a family to work, we could keep almost all of those 20% of leavers who
> leave to just stay at home...

That one word 'just' speaks volumes. People grow up. People change. Perhaps
they want a different challenge than what academic achievement can provide.
Raising children is challenging, daunting, and rewarding.

------
pc2g4d
I'm just not sure how upset to be that there is still some difference in
typical roles between men and women. It may be a norm for women to be more
likely to be the primary caregiver for young children, but is that bad or
wrong? It may even be a biological drive for all I know. Is 50/50
representation at all levels of all fields really the goal we want to shoot
for?

------
rolltiide
I like how she "catches readers up" on women's biology. Since she went out of
her way to do that I think this would be further supported by why women want
to bear children. Or thoughts and perspectives from the women that do not have
children.

The article does a good job of identifying the funnel. It reiterates what we
already know about society: women are aware of their biological clock and
people desire to make children. But it does make an assumption that the women
that stay in the funnel are childless victims, or at least portrays them that
way. "Meanwhile in the Netherlands, woe!" This is hyperbole, but barely. It is
okay to assume an even distribution of wants and desires as the non-STEM
women, but what if there isn't? Let's get some perspectives.

Additionally, freezing eggs, surrogacy, and adoption are options followed by
additional help with nannies and au pair, costly options which could be
supported and subsidized by the very arguments that this article is making.

I think the case would be even stronger if we added the perspective from the
child free women, along with a perspective about cultural tweaks that women
could also consider. Distinct from only pointing out what organizations do not
do to address the maternal wall.

------
toohotatopic
How about the variance difference: men and women are equally intelligent on
average. However, the variance is different so that there are more stupid men
but also more intelligent men.

Could the drop-out rate simply reflect the higher share of men who are able to
fulfill the functions that are required at those higher positions?

------
balls187
My note to the author, enjoy your career. If and when you feel ready to start
a family, you will. And if it doesn't happen, you'll be okay too.

Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women.

Perhaps STEM women who are early career (24-28) would benefit from meeting
mothers (both who are in STEM and not in STEM careers) who had children at age
35+.

> ...Women who stay in academia expect to marry later, and delay or completely
> forego having children, and if they do have children, plan to have fewer
> than their non-STEM counterparts (Sassler et al 2016, Owens 2012). Men in
> STEM have no such difference compared to their non-STEM counterparts

I would love to see the figures regarding the partners of STEM Women vs STEM
Men. Is it due to the old sexist notion that women must "marry up" so a woman
with a successful career have partnered with someone who also has a successful
career?

Having family shifts perspective. Perhaps some of these women no longer felt a
strong desire to further their career, and family matters became more
interesting?

As a father, I love my job, but I gladly set aside my career to raise my kids.

~~~
hurricanetc
>Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women.

It's just a biological reality. It is certainly possible to have a healthy
birth after the age of 35 but the rate of health problems and birth defects
don't go up linearly with age. The rate of pregnancy loss is 35% after the age
of 35 and is above 50% after the age of 45. This is just reality. If women
want to have multiple children it is wise to start before age 33.

~~~
balls187
The statistics do not tell the whole story.

A reason I suggest young women speak with women who started families mid-late
career would hear actual experiences, giving perspective that it's not as
bleak as the statistics show.

We had two children, both healthy, after mom was 35.

We also had a pregnancy that didn't go to term.

I surmise women might take some comfort in knowing that pregnancy
complications are normal.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It's not about individual anecdotes, it's about probabilities and actuarial
risks.

A woman who gets pregnant at 25 is less likely to have issues than a woman who
gets pregnant at 35 and _much_ less likely to have issues than a woman who
gets pregnant at 45.

That's the reality.

The fact that _some_ women have successful pregnancies at 45 doesn't change
it. Nor does it suggest that women should simply ignore the facts and hope for
the best.

 _Some_ drivers make successful journeys while drunk, without killing
themselves or anyone else. That doesn't mean drunk driving is a recommended
personal choice, or that the element of choice somehow makes the risks
disappear, or that drunk drivers who happen to beat the odds and survive many
journeys should be sharing their lifestyle choices with others.

~~~
balls187
> A woman who gets pregnant at 25 is less likely to have issues than a woman
> who gets pregnant at 35 and much less likely to have issues than a woman who
> gets pregnant at 45.

You are equating to "issues" to mean "no healthy children"

> The fact that some women have successful pregnancies at 45 doesn't change it

Is a straw man.

 _Plenty_ of women have successful pregnancies at 35. And 25 year old women
debating that choice should hear from them.

Said differently:

Can you wait too long to have children? Yes. Is 35 too long? No.

------
knorker
"alternative"? Thanks for the better and more specific data, but didn't we
already know this?

Men and women also pair up with the man being older. So this isn't going away
until the government forces equal-age mating.

------
codingmess
If 1 Billion was spent in 2011 to support and encourage minorities and women
in STEM, it really suggests that some of that money should be poured into
providing childcare rather than propaganda.

------
mirimir
I've known a few women who had kids very young, and didn't get serious
professionally until their kids were in school.

But the problem is that they ended up being single parents, at least for a
while.

------
40acres
This seems like a really long argument just to end up at the main point being:
"It really is sexism". The light bulb moment here is that it's not necessarily
sexism on an individual level but on an institutional one.

I believe there is an obvious difference men and women which, on a general
level, incites women to weigh family responsibilities over career prospects.
However, industrialized nations exacerbate that difference by making it very
difficult for women with children to spend the time necessary for career
advancement.

The key here isn't necessarily throwing your hands up and saying there's
nothing you can do about it, but more robust programs for parents to help
lessen the load of parenthood.

------
shawndrost
(The "maternal wall" is sexism. If it impacted men, academia would not be
shaped liked this. This is not to detract from the article, which is awesome.)

------
peteretep
Solution: compulsory paternity leave for male academics.

~~~
satyrnein
Outcome: childfree academics (of all genders) win.

~~~
peteretep
That seems like a fair outcome to me.

------
Jemm
one of the aspects of being bullied, and sexism is a form of bullying, is the
the bullied person is humiliated, made to doubt their own capabilities and
made to fear repercussions. The result being that women leave and cite
personal reasons for, their departure.

Surveys like this are not necessarily honest as the participants are not
necessarily being honest.

------
daenz
Another sunken cost taxpayer bill? "Just spend a little more money to unlock
all the money you already spent." No thanks.

------
trowaway54321
I was discussing this not long ago and hypothesized that we have swung the
pendulum so far in encouraging women into STEM that they feel pressured into
the decision, ultimately leading many of them to go down a path in which they
have no interest.

------
rdiddly
TL;DR - It's babies.

------
hinkley
I can't speak for women, and I'm just smart enough not to try.

But what I can say is that I don't hold all of the values that I did as a
young man. I'm not excited about the same things, and today I find some of
those ideas uncomfortably naive or even off-putting.

As I've engaged in more activities, as I've socialized with more people, I've
encountered many more ideas and a lot of nuance. Nothing has simple answers
and there are other solutions to problems besides code, or tools, or pills, or
surgery.

And one of the consequences of this is that I'm not confident that if I show
up to interview at a startup that I'm going to exhibit the degree of 'passion'
they're looking for. I have plenty of passion. Too much, some will tell you. I
just know beyond all doubt that your new iOS app is not going to save the
world, and quite bluntly, that you have some unresolved issues that you need
to work through if you so desperately need to believe how transformative your
work is going to be. And I know that's not just STEM - all the 20-somethings
who I've seen doing volunteer work - and bless you for showing up - feel
exactly the same way. I'm gonna change the world. I _have_ to change the
world. Otherwise my life is empty and I am nothing.

It can be discomfiting to be around and I'm sure I telegraph it.

They say that young women socialize a little ahead of young men. Maybe they
just get a whiff of my reality before all the rhetoric gets piled on so thick
that's all they can see.

~~~
sequoia
In her article, she explains her hypothesis that women leave top-flight
STEM/academic careers because the demands (and, crucially, _when_ they must be
met: 20s & 30s) conflict with the demands of bearing children during a woman's
most-likely-to-be-successful childbearing years. She goes on to suggest that
creating more supports for mothers such as affordable childcare and possibly
collaborative academic working environments might mitigate the issue.

What leads you to think primarily about "passion" & socialization? It seems
almost as though we read different articles, I didn't see anything about that.

~~~
tomp
This is not a sufficient explanation. There’s more women in law and medicine,
which are equally, if not more demanding. There must be something else - the
nature of work (more people, less machines), the atmosphere (less bro, more
professional), the pay (STEM careers plateau quickly)...

~~~
willhslade
Law and medicine don't Logan's run you out with a constantly and pointlessly
changing tech stack every five years.

~~~
slumdev
It would happen in medicine if the public generally knew the truth.

The risk of a medical error rises by about 1% for every year a doctor is out
of school.

Either AMA's continuing education requirements are lacking, or something else
is at work.

~~~
Cpoll
I've heard that number before, where is it from? Does it control for the idea
that more experienced practitioners tend to be called on for more complex
operations?

~~~
slumdev
This article suggests that while errors increase with the age of the
practitioner, mortality does not. The difference is more likely to result from
differences in training. There is also a lot of variation between individuals,
with some older doctors far outperforming their younger counterparts.

[https://www.healthline.com/health-news/should-doctors-age-
ma...](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/should-doctors-age-matter)

------
gbrown
Judging by what happens most times gender in tech comes up on HN, I’m sure
this thread will be buckets of fun.

~~~
dang
Please don't make the thread even worse by posting unsubstantive comments
about it.

It's a divisive topic, so fractiousness is not easy to avoid, but everyone
should make sure they're up to date on the site guidelines before posting.
They include: " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
gbrown
Fair enough

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I find this a bit pointless- Scott Aaronson has his views that are not the
views of a sizeable majority of women in STEM, who find that their career
progression is hindered by institutionalised sexism. At some point Aaronson
finds or receives a dissenting opinion from a woman in STEM. He publishes it,
with a preface suggesting that _this_ is the _real_ view of a majority of
women in STEM (the opinion "dovetails with what I’ve heard from many other
women in STEM fields, including my wife Dana").

Fair enough- but how often has Aaronson published, or publicised, an opinion
from a woman who disagrees with his view? Er. Not often. Probably because he
disagrees with them and so will tend to find that they do not marshal "data,
logic, and [their] own experience in support of an insight that strikes me as
true and important and underappreciated".

So what have we learned from the fact that Scott Aaronson has published this
opinion on his blog? Absolutely nothing. We knew his opinion, he still has the
same opinion. We know there are other people, including women in STEM, that
have the same opinion as Scott Aaronson. Here is one of them and her opinion.
We have learned nothing new.

This is just preaching to the converted.

~~~
mech1234
Your judgement of the article was nearly entirely informed by who wrote it
rather than its contents. That's a good way to continue a culture war, not a
good way to discover the truth.

I implore you to consider the well-founded facts on both sides, not to claim
this piece has absolutely nothing worth saying.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
The piece by the young scientist has a lot to say, but the preface by Scott
Aaronson only has to say "See, I told you so!". And that's what I'm commenting
on, of course.

------
alharith
Woke twitter after reading this article: Having children is a tool of the
patriarchy! Another way that men keep women down! Why don't _they_ have the
biological maternal desires to have children?

Technocratic twitter after reading this article: We must solve the “maternal
tax” gap!

Normal people after reading this article: "yes, this is what we have been
saying for years. Promote the family."

------
herostratus101
High IQ women completely exiting the gene pool is pretty bad for the species.

------
api
Could people stop using Medium? I refuse to sign up and give them any data
since they're basically an unpaid magazine.

------
lonelappde
The author seems to ignore the fact that plenty of women do work while
pregnant and have children and go back to work after a little as 3months
hiring childcare.

~~~
daotoad
You are ignoring several facts:

1\. Pregnancy is very hard on women's bodies. It is not uncommon for health
effects like high blood pressure, joint inflammation, and gestational diabetes
to become temporarily disabling for expectant mothers. 2\. Infant childcare is
incredibly expensive. Even at professional levels of compensation, the expense
is likely to outweigh the added income from continuing to work. Costs drop
significantly once children are potty trained, but remain quite high. 3\.
Three months of paid maternal leave is very rare. Even with saved time off,
taking large amounts of unpaid leave is hard on a family. 4\. Breast feeding a
child while working full days requires a huge amount of work, above and beyond
the exhausting labor involved in having a new baby. If a nursing room is not
provided, women often resort to spending a large amount of time pumping milk
in the restroom. Which is uncomfortable, unsanitary, and disheartening.

Just because some women have the resources or the stark need to return to work
so early does not mean it is possible or desirable for everyone.

We need to have better maternal leave and accommodations. Fathers need to step
up and do more of the work. We need to have better paternal leave and
accomodations. We need to support affordable child care options. We need to
make the above 4 items available to everyone.

------
danharaj
The fact that women shoulder the primary economic burden of raising children
is structural sexism. Sexism is not merely about personal conduct but also how
we structure society. For millenia across many cultures women have had their
participation in broader society curtailed to the sphere of reproductive and
domestic labor. That is injustice. As Morenz notes, we don't have to accept
that. We can structure our work so that women are not disadvantaged for having
kids and men aren't penalized for taking a greater role in raising them.

This seems like violent agreement. I think Scott was trying to _dismiss_ the
people who criticize them by inviting Morenz to make a guest post. Perhaps his
dismissiveness is the reason why this is so acrimonious.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
This assumes that men and women en masse want equal roles in raising children.
I'm not convinced that this is the case.

~~~
csb6
Sure, many more women may choose to take the more active role, but it’s
important to consider that these conscious choices are affected by implicit
social pressures and expectations that are placed on men and women from
childhood onwards, such as men being expected to be breadwinners and women
being expected to be caregivers. These are pretty arbitrary social constructs
that are not universal or intrinsic to nature or even human societies. So it
follows that what men and women would say they desire is not the full picture,
since they may be unaware of the implicit forces acting on them.

~~~
darawk
It's true that these social pressures exist, and they are certainly sexist.
But I think it's important to distinguish that the _pressure_ is what's
sexist, not the impact of the choice.

~~~
csb6
Then let’s make an effort to expose and reform these sexist structures! That
is the goal of people trying to reform the mindset of STEM institutions. These
structures are not fixed, and so can be changed.

------
deyouz
The article is about women in STEM in Academia, not just STEM.

And I don't understand why people absolutely need to have biological children.
I think more people should just adopt if they want to raise children.

I also think sexism in the US is the biggest factor for women leaving Academia
or not entering STEM. In other countries more than 50% of the researchers are
women and 40% of the students studying computer science are women.

~~~
icandoit
>And I don't understand why people absolutely need to have biological
children.

Consider these possibilities:

1\. A best case scenario is that what you have expressed is a personal opinion
that takes your genes out of the future in a Marty McFly fading away fashion
as this opinion hardens.

Fine. Your choice. More pie for the rest of us.

2\. A worst case scenario where this opinion accumulates in the market place
of ideas and inevitably leads to human extinction.

Impossible right? Well, know that disgust with sex is climbing in rich nations
(like Germany and Japan) and the number of births per woman is falling. Is
this a function of wealth, or technology?

South Korea has fewer than 1.1 births per woman. That can only translate into
a poorer, older, and smaller country for the future. [1]

[https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-
korea/fertil...](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-
korea/fertility-rate)

(I tell people that this was the thickly veiled premise of the movie Bird
Box.)

If that is true, then can it be called a choice? Are people actually choosing
to have fewer sexual partners than their parents generation? Are people really
choosing to feel disgust at the thought of intimate contact?

Maybe repulsion-to-sex is a bigger threat to continued human existence as
nuclear weapons.

Another fun article:

[https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-
all-...](https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-long-until-were-all-
amish-268e3d0de87)

~~~
yorwba
> that disgust with sex is climbing in rich nations

Source? People are having fewer children, but is that because they are too
disgusted to have sex?

~~~
icandoit
Nearly half of young women in Japan are "uninterested in sex" or "averse to
sex"

\- [https://www.rt.com/news/377342-sexless-japanese-marriages-
st...](https://www.rt.com/news/377342-sexless-japanese-marriages-study/) \-
[https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/23...](https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/23/aziz-
ansari/startling-stat-checks-out-46-percent-young-women-j/)

I remember seeing a similar headline for German women but cannot find a source
now. (I think people expect weird think from Japan so it's good practice to
compare to other countries)

Maybe social media and instant communication has replaced (or dulled) some of,
what used to be, our sexual appetites.

Half the world is sub-replacement-rate: "As of 2010, about 48% (3.3 billion
people) of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement
fertility"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-
replacement_fertility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-
replacement_fertility)

What statistics should I look for the document disinterest in sex?

~~~
yorwba
The RT article doesn't say anything about disgust, so why bother linking to
it?

The Politifact article does involve aversion, but only aggregated with
disinterest:

 _" The percentage of women who responded they were not interested in sex at
all or felt an aversion to it was 60.3 percent for ages 16-19 and 31.6 percent
for ages 20-24. Combine the age groups, and the average response was about 46
percent negative — the figure that drove attention-grabbing stories in Western
media."_

To interpret the numbers differently, a net 30% of Japanese girls aged 16-19
become interested in sex within 5 years.

I tried looking for the original report to disaggregate lack of interest and
aversion, but I only found it on Amazon and don't feel like buying it.
[https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4930807085](https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4930807085)

~~~
icandoit
The RT article said that "Nearly half the couples had not had sex in a month".
That happens because they prefer to do something else instead.

Will you grant that this means that interest in sex has fallen?

The Politifact article says "In 2013 a whopping 45 percent of women aged 16 to
24 ‘were not interested in or despised sexual contact,’ and more than a
quarter of men felt the same way."

Which matches my claim:

> Nearly half of young women in Japan are "uninterested in sex" or "averse to
> sex"

My claim was that disgust with sex is rising.

Another article makes these delightful claims:

[https://time.com/5297145/is-sex-dead/](https://time.com/5297145/is-sex-dead/)

    
    
      - More than 40% of Japanese 18- to 34-year-old singles claim they are virgins.
      - the fraction of people getting it on at least once a week fell from 45% in 2000 to 36% in 2016.
      - more than twice as many millennials were sexually inactive in their early 20s than the prior generation was.
      - In 2016, 4% fewer condoms were sold than the year before, and they fell a further 3% in 2017.
      - Teen sex is flat and has been on a downward trend since 1985
      - The median age for first marriage in America is now 29 for men and 27 for women, up from 27 and 25 in 1999.
      - the highest drop in sexual frequency has been among married people with higher levels of education
      - those with offspring in the 6 to 17 age range were doing less of what made them parents
    

What do you make of these data points? I think they successfully demonstrate
that interest in sex is falling.

~~~
yorwba
> My claim was that disgust with sex is rising.

> What do you make of these data points? I think they successfully demonstrate
> that interest in sex is falling.

You're equivocating between disgust and lack of interest, but these are very
different things. I wouldn't have bothered asking for a source if you had
blamed falling interest rather than rising disgust.

~~~
icandoit
I don't think I am "equivocating between disgust and lack of interest".

My motivating concern is universally dropping fertility and whether the
reasons are disgust and disinterest, they both cash out the same way. No
babies.

So, yes, they exist as two distinct categories, both inside a larger category.
I'm talking about that larger category.

Let's imagine that people want to have sex, but they can't find the time in
their busy lives. I would lump that in with disinterest. Now, whether you
would or not is a discussion about your language preferences. You are entitled
to language preferences, but I'm more interested in the slow suicide of
everyone around me.

I find this slow suicide fascinating.

Maybe everyone is too busy arguing on the internet about what words mean to
have children. That's weird and bad. That's a future we should avoid.

------
alfor
Those are very high status, high demand 'job', you need a lot so sacrifices to
achieve tenure professor, and I think they are not compatible with family
raising for most people. Why, because you are competing with the best people
that are willing to sacrifice life balance, family, leisure time, etc.

But the thing is, it's a choice, no one is forced to go into super high status
occupations. Those that choose so must be very bright and completely dedicated
to _one thing_. I think most women know or realise later on that this level of
competition is insane, and that's why they quit and find something that is not
as high status, but is more enjoyable.

A very small percentage of men are willing to ditch everything else to be at
the top, some get there, most don't, most women find out that it's not worth
it.

Oh, and I think it's crucial for children to bond with their mother and
skipping this and putting them in daycare early is not in their best interest.
I also think that motherhood is more valuable than most engineering job or
paper publishing.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> I’ve got a big scholarship, and a lot of people supporting me to give me
the best shot at an academic career — a career I dearly want. But, I also want
a family — maybe two or three kids

Oh.

Up to this point I was keeping notes with my criticism of this article, but
this caused me to stop and reconsider.

If I may advise the author, I understand how difficult it is to balance life
decisions that seem to be at odds, but trying to deny the very reason why
those life decisions are hard to combine will not make the choice any easier.

It is stupid and sexist that you have to think of pursuing a PhD and having
two or three kids as an either/or option, when the (probably) man you'll want
to start a family with will not have to do that, even if they are also a PhD
in STEM.

This is part and parcel of the sexism that people complain about. It's not
just inappropriate behaviour by senior male academics. There is no reason why
a woman must put her career on hold to start a family when a man in the same
career does not need to. There is no reason why women are expected to be the
ones most concerned with the business of having and raising children when men
are expected to be the most concerned with advancing their careers. How is
that not sexist? How is that not the sexism that's keeping women from
advancing their careers in STEM academia?

~~~
hackinthebochs
>How is that not sexist? How is that not the sexism that's keeping women from
advancing their careers in STEM academia?

Why should the academy structure itself so that women who choose to put their
attention into their families do not have a career impact? If academic
positions are necessarily zero-sum, it seems impossible to correct for this
without seriously unfair negative externalities?

How is it that the biases inherent in collective decisions of individuals
within society are the responsibility of the academy to correct for (that men
tend to choose to focus on career and women on family)?

~~~
abathur
Maybe it helps if I knock the particulars out of your case:

Why should <organization> structure itself <in response to reasoned feedback
from the humans who constitute it>?

Do you have some clear argument for why members of an organization aren't
entitled to participate in shaping it?

~~~
hackinthebochs
I don't see how my point served to excluded a member of the academy weighing
in. Note that my question was specific in the context of a zero-sum industry.
I'm happy to see reasoned arguments that address this point.

~~~
abathur
You didn't expressly exclude it, but weighing it answers your question.

The academy should structure itself in the way its members decide it should be
structured.

