
Women in Science - acangiano
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
======
cauterized
As an actual woman in computing, who's not particularly interested in having
kids and chose her career for practical reasons, I find this article (and many
other articles and comments like it, written by men and relying on stereotypes
and blatant assumption) to be offensive.

And before you tell me to grow a thicker skin: by calling this offensive, I
don't intend to squash anyone's ability to speak. But I absolutely have the
right to be pissed off when someone pretends to speak for me. It makes me lose
respect for the person who thinks they can pontificate about someone else's
experience and motivations.

~~~
stolio
I think the central argument is worth spending more time on: women have
options that men don't.

Even in choosing colleges women have more and in many ways better options. An
engineering school trying to attract females has to compete with about 50 all
girls colleges across the country where the girls will be treated quite well
for four years. Guys don't have that path available so it's easier to sell
them on the idea of four-and-a-half to five difficult years to earn a four
year degree.

~~~
cauterized
That wasn't the central argument I perceived. Based on how the piece was
introduced, I perceived an argument that biases (which have been demonstrated
over and over in scientific studies) and hostile environment have less to do
with gender ratios in STEM than <long list of stereotypes about values weakly
linked to data that are related only if you make some major assumptions backed
only by pop psychology>.

Maybe if instead of buying into traditional assumptions about gender roles we
questioned them; maybe if we encouraged people to step outside traditional
roles rather than spending our effort trying to insist their existence is
justified; maybe then men would have more choices too (like being stay at home
dads, for instance).

~~~
stolio
We have a very selective and one-sided conversation about traditional gender
roles that generally hinges upon notions of male privilege and patriarchy.
That's not very helpful when trying to understand why men are more likely to
overwork and undervalue themselves since being privileged and overvalued (for
their masculinity, of course) predicts they would do the opposite. (You can
shoe-horn this into a feminist critique by saying the men who become
scientists do so because they fail to meet their gender expectations, but the
guys down in the coal mines or dying in wars are as manly as it gets, and
they're also overworked and undervalued.)

I'm not just questioning traditional gender roles, I'm also questioning the
feminist framework I used for years to understand those gender roles.

~~~
cauterized
I realize this is a "no true Scotsman" argument, but... The feminism I was
brought up in sees the limitations of male gender roles as the other face of
the same coin. Women will never truly have equality of opportunity and
expectation until traditional male gender roles and expectations are also
dissolved - both because male gender roles can't exist without female gender
roles and because women's opportunity in the workplace is limited by the need
for their partners to take on more responsibility in the home. Unfortunately,
this assertion often runs into accusations of attempts to "feminize" men.

~~~
stolio
It sounds like you don't care about male problems because they're inherently
important to you, but they're just a stepping stone to fixing the real
problems which are the female problems.

I see a lot of political will and capital devoted towards the few areas of
society where women lag behind men: STEM, C-level/board positions, and being
billionaires. But what about the areas where women are doing better than men,
like education in general? What about the gender gaps of being a war casualty
(90%+ male), dying at work (90%+ male) or being incarcerated (90%+ male)? Are
these things really only worth dealing with because as a side effect women
will have more opportunities in the workplace?

I agree that we need to be honest about gender roles and both their good and
bad aspects. I disagree that feminism is leading the way.

~~~
cauterized
I do care about men and I agree that those are problems that need to be fixed,
but they're outside the scope of feminism. (Although one could argue that if
certain flavors of feminism succeeded they would become much less lopsidedly
male problems because a side effect would be that women would represent a
higher percent of war casualties and job fatalities, but I'm not sure anyone
would call that in itself progress.) Feminism isn't about fixing all the
things that are wrong with the world, it's about fixing the problems that hold
women back, which btw are not just about things like c-level board positions.

Women are less likely to get proper followup care after heart attacks, for
instance, even though they experience them nearly as frequently as men. Sexual
assault and rape still affect women at such a higher rate than men it's
staggering. Women are also far more likely than men to experience crippling
depression (how much of that is due to biological vs cultural factors is
unknown), although men tend to be more successful at committing suicide. And
the growing restrictions on abortion access WILL cause women's deaths just as
they did before Roe v Wade.

There are other movements that address other problems with the world
(pacifism, labor rights, and more). Being a feminist doesn't preclude also
believing or participating in those movements. But just as sex trafficking is
outside the scope of labor rights, improving safety precautions for dangerous
jobs is outside the scope of feminism. Does that make sense?

~~~
stolio
> Sexual assault and rape still affect women at such a higher rate than men
> it's staggering.

This depends on who you trust to gather the data and who is included in that
data. I really don't want to have the rape/sexual assault discussion because
it's never productive, but I will say that I'm not at all impressed with how
feminism has handled the subject and that it's created barriers to male
victims getting help and support.

There are no large scale movements that deal with specifically male problems.
Men's Rights is trying but it's labeled 'hate speech' by feminists. If we're
being honest there are no feminists in the Men's Rights movement, there are no
feminists who give equal weight to men's problems in general because feminism
is based on the idea that women's problems are more serious, more important
and more urgent. That may have been reasonable in 1915 when women couldn't
vote, in 2015 I'm not buying it, not even close.

Have you even looked at, for example, education numbers recently? Women get
more degrees per field except for the hard STEM fields[0], women go to college
more than men in general[1] and the individual group that needs the most help
in education is a subset of males[2]. It's been since 1991 that women have
been graduating college more than men[3]. But instead of dealing with the
majority of the education system where men are doing worse than women, we
constantly hear about the few areas where women aren't doing as well and we're
told it's because of sexism, micro-aggressions, oppression, etc. and we all
need to take a stand together _c 'mon we can do it!_

There's no effort to close the high school graduation gender gap, the college
enrollment or graduation gaps, it's only where women are behind that changes
need to be made. If we changed the numbers to what feminists want - STEM
fields evenly split male-female - we wouldn't have equality in education, it
would be female domination in education. It already is female domination in
education, adding STEM would just make it worse.

[0] - [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-
bachelor...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-
degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/) [1] -
[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-
colle...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-
enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/) [2] -
[http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/black-male-
gradu...](http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/black-male-graduation-
rates) [3] - [http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/gender-gap-
in-...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/gender-gap-in-
education.aspx)

~~~
cauterized
I have a lot of trouble getting behind a men's rights movement that feels like
an extremely bitter backlash. People claiming association with it have been
behind some extremely frightening threats and intimidation towards women who
dare to discuss bias and misogynistic online cultures. And it feels even more
reactionary when no legitimate discussion can be had about the struggles women
face without an attempted derail into "but men have problems too!"

~~~
stolio
What do you think this thread is? The author wrote an article looking at why
men are more willing to be exploited by the academic system and the top
comment, which is yours, is "but women have problems too!" You didn't even
realize what the article was about, to you it was just another unenlightened
man who was had offended you.

The central thesis of the piece is controversial but I think it's merits
discussion. However when you show up and label it 'offensive' that discourages
discourse and encourages the marginalization of the article's author and the
article's points. It's a common feminist complaint that conversations about
women's issues are derailed, but 1) you guys do it too and 2) I've found that
the accusation is often just a quick way to silence dissenting opinions and to
avoid engaging on points that don't fit the agenda.

I'm not asking you to get behind a men's rights movement, I'm not even part of
it. I'm pointing out why men need it, or something similar to it. You can
judge it by its worst members if you want but that's never been a good way to
understand any group.

------
facepalm
It doesn't have to be alimony - you can also remain happily married and live
off the income of your spouse.

According to this googled article, 29% percent of mothers of children under 18
are stay at home mothers:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/08/women-s...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/08/women-
stay-at-home-mothers-work/7468163/)

Two thirds of them are supposedly married, so I guess the alimony case might
be around 10 percent of all mothers.

~~~
ArmchairEcon
[http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/106-children-
in-...](http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/106-children-in-single-
parent-families#detailed/1/any/false/36,868,867,133,38/any/429,430) says that
about 35 percent of U.S. children live in single-parent families or 25 million
children total. In any case, the fewer the number of women competing to
collect child support from high-income men the higher will be the returns to
that strategy and the more attractive it will be compared to working for
wages.

------
serve_yay
Honest question: So how's the architect biz? It seems like architect is one of
those vaguely aspirational occupations (like lawyer) that could have gotten
swamped in recent decades with folks such as Bill. People just looking for a
good job, not necessarily on fire with passion for it. (Not that I'm saying
you have to be full of passion for something in order to do it as a job -
quite the contrary.)

------
frossie
Wow, it was hard to look past all the offensive crap to get angry at all the
logic holes. Let me see if I can keep this PG.

>age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend
of $1800 per month >age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000
per year

Actually the median total time to degree is far lower for STEM than it is for
other fields. TTD in Physics and Astronomy is 7.0 years compared to 10.2 in
the Humanities

[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06312/nsf06312.pdf](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06312/nsf06312.pdf)

>compensation for executives at public companies is reported every year.

Yes, becaues Forbes executive positions are SO much more open to women that
academic scientific careers, it makes total sense to compare them.

>Consider taking the same high IQ and work ethic, going into business, and
being put on the fast track at a company such as General Electric. Rather than
being fired at age 44, this is about the time that she will be handed ever-
larger divisions to operate, with ever-larger bonuses and stock options.

A tenured academic has the same chance of being fired as GE employee. Or it's
just as easy to be a postdoc as a GE stock-option executive. Yeah right.

> At age 22, the schoolteacher is earning a living wage and can begin making
> plans to get married and have children.

Because every woman aspires to have babies at 22.

> "I'm not sure if I'll be able to get any job at all.

Note that when a grad student says that, there is ALWAYS an implicit "... on
what I would prefer doing".

Unemployment rate for Physics PhDs is just under 10% - this is rough the same
for any occupation in the "professional" sector if you consider involuntary
part-time workers (not many part time science jobs)

[http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/technology/t...](http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/technology/technology/2014/07/STEM_phd_charts/Spreadsheet_Physics.xls)

[http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat21.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat21.htm)

> A woman who is smart and organized enough to earn a PhD in science would
> also likely be smart and organized enough to find a higher-income co-parent.
> What is the profit potential when suing someone earning more than $250,000
> per year?

Yes, because (a) women use their career skills in finding husbands and (b)
being a physicist and suing a rich ex for alimony are comparable choices -
after all, why else would you be marrying? You have to be effing kidding me.

> The most serious concern is that the field that a youngster found
> fascinating at age 20 will no longer be fascinating after 20 or 25 years.

Yes, because only scientists get bored with their careers. Every person who
decided to do advertising sales on the other hand, is still having a blast.

> A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as
> become petty criminals

Right, guys do science cause they are too dumb to know better. And people
become petty criminals as a career choice. And don't forget women don't do
anything as pointless as playing video games (I mean ha ha ha, next you're
going to tell me that women PLAY videogames, imagine).

Look, the postdoc system ubiquitous in STEM _is_ exploitative. Every person
working in science, man or woman, knows this. And it's a perverse outcome of a
funding and success model based on citation rate.

But to say women don't go into science because they're too smart for that is
the same as saying that African Americans don't go into IT because they too
smart want to hang around geeks and carry a pager. It's insulting to everybody
concerned and completely and utterly inaccurate.

~~~
dgabriel
The stuff about child support is actively gross and totally incorrect. Median
child support in the US is ~$500/mo; vanishingly few people have the kind of
money he's talking about.

[http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p60-246.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p60-246.pdf)

~~~
ArmchairEcon
That the average person who pursues a job is not very successful economically
does not mean that the job is not worth pursuing for someone who is thoughtful
and talented. As noted above, if the median child support is only $6000 tax-
free dollars per year that suggests that high-income potential fathers are an
underutilized resource.

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/c...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/computer-programmers.htm) shows that the median computer programmer
gets paid $75,000 per year. That doesn't stop thoughtful and talented
programmers from earning a lot more (though collusion by employers, e.g.,
Apple, has interfered with what would have been a market).

------
kendallpark
> If you are extremely introverted, you might prefer to work as a computer
> programmer.

??? Really?

~~~
ovi256
Yes.

Pose a simple question, get a simple answer.

What is so surprising about this assertion ?

~~~
kendallpark
I resent the implication. Programming != introverted activity.

