

For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively - ilamont
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Women-to-Think/131547/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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Retric
Significantly more Women graduate with a BS from US collages than Men. Is that
yet another gender imbalance that needs to be addressed by schools? Or is that
a societal issue and having collages focusing on increasing Male admission and
graduation rates a waste of resources?

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robertpateii
"Significantly" is an exaggeration. The numbers i found
([http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News_Room&...](http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News_Room&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=38683))
said that women earn 57% of all BS degrees.

I imagine it'd have to get closer to 75% before people actually started
worrying about men's graduation rates.

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realitygrill
People will only start worrying when the ratio is closer to 3 women graduating
per male?

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robertpateii
Let me rephrase. Using 75% implies a certain level of authority I don't have.

"I think it will take a bigger imbalance before people start worrying about a
gender imbalance in favor of men."

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meta-coder
With all due respect, I think it is in the DNA. Looking at our evolution
during the past million years, may be women were dominated by men. They might
not have had enough freedom to follow their curiosities until several thousand
years back. So it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels
that current men's brain is at. Have we done enough comparative studies of
men's and women's brains?

~~~
rmc
_it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels that current
men's brain is at_

Wait, did you actually compare women to cave men or half monkey? Maybe that's
why blacks aren't represented well in highly technical or high paying jobs,
cause they only came down from the trees recently?</sarcasm>

OK I'll bite: The problem with your 'evolution theory' is that men and women
aren't separate species and interbreed, a lot. Half the DNA in each women
comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man comes from a woman. If "women
DNA" were 'stupider' than "man DNA", then (like lots of genetic traits (e.g.
skin colour, height)), you'd see it evening out over the generations. If there
was a "dum dum gene" that only lived on the X or Y chromosome, you'd have to
explain why it doesn't seem to affect people who don't have XX and XY (some
men are XXY, some women are X, etc.)

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mustafa0x
> Half the DNA in each women comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man
> comes from a woman.

See: <http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>

    
    
      Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago.
      Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.
    

Will look for sources.

~~~
rmc
It's entirely possible for both things to be true.

In a village of 1 man and 10 women, and that man impregnates each women,
resulting in 10 babies. If you look at that set of 10 babies, then each baby
will have half their DNA from a man and half from a woman. However of the 10
babies, the set of male ancestors is 1 person, but the set of female ancestors
will be 10.

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roguecoder
The article mis-states their case: women earn 52% of chemistry undergrad
degrees and 41% of straight-up math degrees. The problem is not math itself
but the culture surrounding Engineering, Physics and Computer Science in
particular.

~~~
hjuihjigt
As far as math is concerned, not even close to 40% of advances in the field
are fostered by women.

In fact it seems that even though more women get Bscs in math, actual cutting
edge research in math continues to be made by 10% of women at best, roughly
the same ratio as a generation ago.

Still not a single Fields medalist is female (despite the tremendous backstage
games to change that) and that is not because of bias, very few (if any) women
currently deserve it.

~~~
Shorel
Women are good and average and safe (genetically speaking).

Men are more distributed in the extremes: both extremely bad and extremely
good.

Just think of this: Why the number of people in prison is mostly males instead
of half male and half female? Should we try to 'correct' this too?

This is not a problem of society, but a consequence of different reproductive
strategies.

~~~
Mz
I don't know that there is any reason to think these social outcomes are
rooted in genes. It looks to me like it's rooted in something else. Care to
share where/why you got the idea that it is genetically determined?

Thanks.

~~~
barry-cotter
What is the maximum number of children a man can have? What is the maximum
number of children a woman can have? What does this imply about the best
strategy for maximising number of descendants for men and for women?

Male mating strategies exhibit far higher skew than female ones. Men have
higher variance than women in every trait I know of, from heighth to IQ scores
to income. Men take more risks.

Here's[0] where you'll find the most convenient counterarguments or pointers
to same. Here's[1] the best book I've encountered on the general topic. The
introductory chapter is excellent.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psych...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology#Ethnocentrism)
[1][http://books.google.com.hk/books/about/The_Handbook_of_Evolu...](http://books.google.com.hk/books/about/The_Handbook_of_Evolutionary_Psychology.html?id=esDW3xTKoLIC)

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gm
Article does not pass the smell test. College is not where people go to decide
if they are mathematically oriented or not. Everything that precedes it does.

~~~
crusso
The article is in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

It's speaking to an audience of Educators at the University level.

Naturally, the context of their solutions will be one in which those Educators
operate.

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robertpateii
Do bias, discrimination, and biological differences not drive preferences?
Kids internalize the bias of the culture around them at an early age.

Why is this a mystery to the authors?

Referenced Quote from Article: "While bias, discrimination, and biological
differences may have some secondary influence, they found, women simply prefer
careers that don't involve math over careers in engineering, physics,
mathematics, operations research, computer science, and chemistry. Why this is
so remains unanswered."

Some Related Material: Podcast interview by Scott Hanselman on this same
topic([http://www.hanselminutes.com/303/improving-diversity-in-
tech...](http://www.hanselminutes.com/303/improving-diversity-in-technology-
with-kimberly-bryant-from-blackgirlscodecom))

~~~
crusso
> Kids internalize the bias of the culture around them at an early age.

How are you determining the weight and timing of causative factors in order to
make a nurture over nature proclamation like that?

~~~
robertpateii
I wasn't making any sort of proclamation like that.

I'm asking why the authors think that nature and nurture is not a sufficient
explanation for the preferences of college age adults.

I brought up cultural bias specifically because it's something that people are
used to trying to change, as opposed to genetics.

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anusinha
Some thoughts about the coder culture and how it relates to women can be found
on this really interesting blog post. [http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-
development/the-ugly-...](http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-
development/the-ugly-underbelly-of-coder-culture-190618)

I can't say that I agree with all of it, but it's definitely worth reading to
understand certain social and cultural dynamics.

