
The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM - wyuenho
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/?utm_source=atlfb&amp;single_page=true
======
krat0sprakhar
This article cites the same research that was discussed on HN a while ago as
its basis:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678)

------
zerr
One reason could be - in poor/developing countries STEM is understood as the
escape path from the poverty, while in developed countries people seem assured
in their future even if they go in humanities or any other non-tech field -
thus following their interests/hobbies rather than the need.

EDIT: unintentional tl;dr as it seems :)

~~~
howlgram
this would not only explain why less women go into stem, but also why more
guys go into it, as it is common for a guy to feel the onus of securing
financial safety for his family.

And not gonna lie, even I, a guy, picked STEM partly because I see it as the
best escape route from this country, I would have picked something more fun
and less demanding otherwise

~~~
tom_mellior
> it is common for a guy to feel the onus of securing financial safety for his
> family

In other words, this is _not_ about what the article claims (girls are just
not interested, presumably for biological reasons) but about expectations
hammered into all of us by society.

------
hackpert
Whenever such studies or analyses come up in the media, I find that people are
often eager to jump to causative conclusions on the lines of "oh females must
have a natural inclination towards 'softer' fields" or (as in case of this
article) "In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to
pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less." However,
even if we ignore the obvious correlation vs causation fallacy at play here,
these conclusions conveniently ignore a million other societal factors that
affect such decisions. For instance, as much of a gender-equality-utopia
Scandinavian countries are, they're certainly not free of gender roles and the
societal institutions that enforce those. While of course anecdotal, several
of my friends from these countries have talked about how they faced invisible,
passive-aggressive forms of bullying from fellow students (a large majority of
them reportedly female) for having 'geeky' interests such as math. When
presented with other options that may eventually be equally or slightly less
fulfilling, but come without the social pressure, it makes sense to most
people to go with the flow. So much for "natural inclinations"...

~~~
howlgram
are you implying that male students who go for stem don't face bullying akin
to being "geeky" or "nerds"? Please...

~~~
cholantesh
I would emphatically say that this isn't a thing in 2018.

~~~
whatshisface
How could you even know that it wasn't? Besides, kids never got bullied for
wanting to become engineers, kids got bullied for all of the hyper-focused
interests and trait expressions that makes them in to _good_ engineers.

~~~
cholantesh
Because the cultural zeitgeist is pretty much entirely _for_ the things
stereotypically dumped on in past decades. Because STEM's importance is
axiomatic in the same culture. Because the arts/humanities/SocSci outgroup is
far more universally derided upon (the merits of that derision are not
relevant to this discussion).

~~~
whatshisface
The culture you're describing sounds like something that might arise in SV,
but trust me it doesn't really describe America... Propaganda campaigns rarely
set what kids think is cool.

The impact of all of these weird pro-STEM programs is a really complicated
discussion, but let me suggest that it doesn't really make high school any
easier for the vast majority. (The social structure of kids doesn't really
look to DuPont for ideas about which way is up...) Your response almost
reminds me of how some people are feeling left out of minority help programs
("what did I do to deserve a landscape devoid of scholarships," that kind of
thing.) without realizing exactly how little help those programs really
provide. In a sense, overestimating the effectiveness of a response to
privilege so harshly that you think the privilege has been reversed.

~~~
cholantesh
>The culture you're describing sounds like something that might arise in SV,
but trust me it doesn't really describe America... Propaganda campaigns rarely
set what kids think is cool.

I didn't mention my geographic location (Toronto) or the root causes of the
cultural shift (I can't speak to that), so these are some strange assumptions
to make. I'm also not really following the rest of your argument, tbh.

In any case, I stand by my argument that this:

>are you implying that male students who go for stem don't face bullying akin
to being "geeky" or "nerds"? Please...

is a fairly tall order in 2018. Positioning yourself as someone who seeks a
career in STEM, regardless of your gender, is not marking yourself out for
bullying, and hasn't been for a long time.

------
ZeroGravitas
This, and similar research I'd seen before seems to point to women being equal
or better at STEM than men (and also being better at non-STEM stuff), but
actively avoiding it as a low-status role when they have better options.

Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some kind
of vindication.

The data appears to be saying you (we) suck, but that's a win if you think the
data was going to show that one gender sucked (and you ignore that you
secretly thought it was them).

~~~
lliamander
> Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some
> kind of vindication.

An amusing and insightful observation.

I would say it's baffling until you realize that the alternative is that the
whole the gap in female STEM employment continues to be attributed solely to
male sexism. It's better to be perceived as stupid than evil.

Also, are we all now in agreement that there are likely cognitive differences
between men and women, and that it is beneficial to explore those differences
scientifically? Honest question.

edit: missing word

~~~
rimliu

      > are we all now in agreement that there are likely
      > cognitive differences between men and women
    

Alas, far from it I am afraid. Which is very puzzling. Not many will argue
that men and women have different physiology, different physical build. But
god forbid from making the assumption that cognitive interests may also
differ.

~~~
palunon
Do you have relevant scientific literature to back that claim ?

~~~
pas
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-
exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-
differences/)

------
telesilla
Let's turn the argument on it's head.

Statistics say boys are more heavily inclined to have a STEM career. Does this
mean they feel they cannot consider a career in other fields like teaching,
nursing or other female-dominated fields?

As a woman I often wonder, what's so great about STEM aside from the paycheck?
It depends on your bosses (or being your own if you are lucky and that way
inclined), but I don't think we've shown many girls that STEM is really
rewarding and it looks on TV like it involves a lot of staring at computer
screens. Boring! So I expect that will change when we get to use more
interactive interfaces. Also, I hope society does more work to let boys grow
up feeling STEM isn't their only hope.

~~~
howlgram
Yes thank you, people seem to forget that the reason why STEM gets a higher
paycheck is because there's less people willing to go for it, both female and
male, the paycheck is not a prize you get for being male, it's a prize you get
for the sacrifice you make. Look at it this way: no one is complaining about
the lack of girls in the blue collar industry.

~~~
tomp
> less people willing to go for it

Or capable. I imagine the IQ bar is set quite a bit higher for STEM-like
courses and careers... Also, there's much less room for bullshit (at least in
programming - your code either works, or it doesn't work, and that's really
easy to verify at university and when applying to jobs - as opposed to e.g.
marketing, where it's much harder to quantify someone's skill).

------
dontcare25
Career Successful women in stem told me that she would have pursed for a
different career if she wasn't the daughter of immigrants. She was destined to
be an engineer or a doctor.

~~~
telesilla
>engineer or a doctor

These are both STEM fields (Science, technology, engineering, mathematics).
Doctor is a crossover in my view, anyway. Sounds like she would like more
autonomy with her career choices, rather than not be in a STEM field.

~~~
groovy2shoes
I think GP means that she felt like engineer and doctor were the only options
she could choose from, and therefore she was effectively dragooned into a STEM
career. That is, if she'd been dealt a different hand, she would've preferred
a career in something other than engineering or medicine.

------
gonvaled
I would take the whole equality movement more seriously if I had been able, in
the past decade, to spot a negative news article / report on women.

When you get all the time exclusively negative news about men, you could start
thinking that this is a coordinated (or emergent?) campaign.

~~~
skjerns
coordinated by who? By negative reports you mean 'something that women do
wrong'?

~~~
gonvaled
If we insist on reporting by gender (that is questionable in itself) reporting
must be truthful, otherwise we risk that these reports are not taken
seriously.

I am sure women are better than men at a lot of things, and equally good at
other things. What are men better at? We _know_ men are better at some things
than women, but currently nobody is willing/interested/daring to report on
this.

Does it matter who is better? It seems yes, since lots of news are talking
about how much better women are.

Come on, I am extremely positive about equality; if you are starting to
antagonize people like me, something is going really wrong.

------
lsy
Drawing conclusions about "innate" differences between men and women from this
data doesn't seem valid. There's a lot of research left to eliminate
confounding effects on participation that aren't covered or investigated by
the "Global Gender Gap Index" (e.g. cultural attitudes towards women in STEM,
or on-the-job discrimination). Scatter-plotting two datasets available on the
internet doesn't feel like enough research for me to dismiss reports from
women that they are discouraged from CS before, and during, their careers.

The trendline cited in the article isn't even conclusive, either—eliminating
outliers would reduce it almost to noise. Even if it were, there hasn't, to
date, been any reasonable explanation for why women's "innate" biology would
make them any less interested in professions whose parameters and limitations
are purely human-constructed and invented in the past century. Whatever
happened during the evolution of the sexes was certainly not informed by the
interestingness of C++.

~~~
jochung
Evolution was opinionated enough to create measurable differences in spatial
ability, personality, drives and so on, between genders and within genders.
Its velocity is directly proportional to the variance that exists in the
population: you need something to differentiate in order to have differential
selection pressure.

Your hypothesis is in fact the radical one: that programming is somehow such
an unseen before ability, that evolution until now has not evolved any
machinery to repurpose for its realization. Given everything we know about the
very obvious cognitive limits we do have, and where they come from, that seems
implausible.

The common reasoning by the way does dismiss reports from men and women alike
that all this diversity mongering has poisoned the workplace atmosphere and
mostly serves to enrich and flatter the egos of people who wouldn't show up
unless they got special treatment for their own demographic, with special
segregated events, hiring pipelines and accolades. The old "women in X" spiel.
These things are most definitely constructed, and not for the reason they
advertise. The standards of evidence demanded to abolish them are sky high
compared to the spurious reasoning that spawned them.

~~~
moosekaka
I have often wondered if one day, the skill of underwater basket weaving was
suddenly prized by society as highly as STEM jobs are today....would we see
the same pressure to have more more X in underwater basket weaving (where X is
your underrepresented group of choice).

A follow up question then to people pursuing STEM fields....are you in it
because you're interested in the subject or because of the promise of
money/status? An age old question I've heard since I was a young boy.

~~~
Hextinium
As someone in university and talking to a lot of both genders why they want to
join engineering I get a lot of nebulous answers that don't really traceback
to a main character trait or reason. Which is fine you don't have a totally
define answer but I am kinda perplexed by the desire to do something with
seeming no reason.

As a side note I see a lot of women engineers start out as saying they want to
do Biomed and the switching to something else. Not totally sure why but I find
it interesting.

------
ggm
Iran has more women engineers and graduates overall. I'm told it can be as
much as 75%. I half suspect that it's two things. The society at large is very
gender unequal but applied engineering wants outcomes enough that it overcomes
societal distortion to get capable women into roles for mutual benefit.

The second reason is that highly skilled Iranian women stem graduates qualify
for immigration points in receiving economies like Australia.

I've worked with some, and know some. They're good. The system works for them
as individuals if not in the wider sense of what we'd want in an equal
society.

------
dvt
Equality of _opportunity_ does not necessarily imply equality of _outcome_.
This isn't a paradox. Why are still people still confused about this?

(Actually, people aren't confused about this, but it makes for great clickbait
articles and ad revenue because it fans the flames of both sides of the
argument.)

~~~
cm2187
One of the many simplifications in this debate. Another one: if someone is
arguing that there is a difference in the distribution of a particular
character between men and women. Immediatly I read comments jumping to the
conclusion “my god it says women are more/less [whatever] than men”, as in
“all women”. Lots of people seem to be incapable of thinking in term of
distributions, which makes it really hard to have any discussion.

~~~
YouAreGreat
> Lots of people seem to be incapable of thinking in term of distributions,
> which makes it really hard to have any discussion.

Most people seem very capable of _thinking_ statistically, but they don't
_communicate_ in distributions.

For two people communicating in good faith, the two statements (1) "Boys are
taller than girls" and (2) "Anne is taller than Sean" don't prompt talk about
how both can't be true at the same time, sexist. People communicate
statistical differences as "absolutes", but when communicating in good faith,
everybody knows what everybody means.

Look at stereotype research. Most stereotypes are statistically true. People
communicate them "as if" absolute, but nobody's head explodes when individual
examples don't "conform" to the stereotype. That's because people can _think_
in distributions.

That's not surprising, it's how to survive in a stochastic environment.

This gap between thought and speech only becomes problematic ("makes it really
hard to have any discussion") because we can rhetorically _exploit_ the fact
that most people can't explicitly communicate about distributions. Just tell
them they're bigoted, and they don't know how to refute you. Yay, you win.

------
tomcam
It’s almost like... men and women are different.

~~~
cgearhart
The article addresses that idea.

> The findings will likely seem controversial, since the idea that men and
> women have different inherent abilities is often used as a reason...to argue
> we should forget trying to recruit more women into the stem fields.
> But...that’s not quite what’s happening here. > In wealthy nations, [women]
> believe that they have the freedom to pursue [other] alternatives and not
> worry so much that they pay less.

The research does not seem to find that it is gender aptitude or interest
differences that accounts for the disparity in STEM graduates.

> ...the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger
> than the number of women who were graduating with stem degrees. That means
> there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women
> away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects.

~~~
pedrosorio
> But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the
> countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and
> girls’ was reading

> And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic
> Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls
> in having science as their best subject.

The research seems pretty clear.

> ...the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger
> than the number of women who were graduating with stem degrees.

This quote is not related to whether there are interest differences or not.
They may be equally good in science/math and something else and decide they
want to do the other thing without that automatically implying "society is
causing this preference" (and by the way, medicine is not "STEM" for some
reason, but no one is becoming a doctor without strong aptitude for
math/science).

If the research results I quoted above are to be believed, regarding aptitude,
someone may excel in A (say girls in these countries get "very good" scores in
math at the same rate as boys) and be much better in B (they excel in
reading/other skills at a higher rate than boys) and it would be natural for
this person to pursue B in that case, no?

------
DoreenMichele
Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678)

(Upon skim, this does not seem to be a duplicate per se.)

------
Pyxl101
An article about this research was submitted to HN earlier today, and provoked
vigorous discussion with 271 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678)

Here's a link to the actual paper:
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719)

------
soVeryTired
If you look closely at their scatter plot, you can see that the UAE, Turkey,
Algeria, and Tunisia cluster in the lower right. Without them, the
relationship would be considerably weaker. Is there something in particular
about Middle Eastern culture that's skewing the results?

I'm not sure I understand the choice of countries in the regression either.
Where are India and China, for example?

~~~
nukeop
What could be so particular about the Middle Eastern culture that would result
in a different treatment of women in these countries? Is it about the climate?
Is it about the diet? The research must continue to resolve this mindboggling
mystery.

~~~
soVeryTired
Not sure I understand the reason for the sarcasm there.

------
funkythingss
This phenomenon isn't entirely new. Some man have seen it as "Scandinavian
gender paradox".

Still, why are we surprised? We know instinctively, that there will never web
50/50 in some fields, because man/women just don't like it as much. It's sad
that some people have to pretend to agree with the feminist narrative

~~~
tnzn
Except some studies have shown countries with more equal rights country have
worse gender stereotypes overall. And even if the studied were to be flawed,
your "men and women have different tasted" theory is pure narrative as well.
No study with any solid methodology has ever shown women and men have
inherently different tastes when it comes to STEMs, and it's pretty much
impossible considering the intertwined nature of nature and nurture and the
very cultural nature of STEMs.

------
tnzn
This paradox has been highlighted at another level : a study which I read in
the book "Psychologie sociale : perspective multiculturelle" by Serge Guimond
showed that countries with the highest gender/sex equality in terms of RIGHTS
also had the highest gender gap in terms of STEREOTYPES.

------
nukeop
Forcing people to change their interests based on an agenda only results in
them being even less interested than they were in the first place. There is
also the backlash to the nonstop pushing of politically-based hiring instead
of meritocratic practices. Some even state "meritocracy" is outright
oppressive and should never be applied.

~~~
tnzn
Maybe because these people realized meritocracy is an outright lie and that in
any instance there are gender/racial/class/geographical/... inequality, or
even biological inequality you right-wingers are so keen to point at, so
there's no way to actually talk about merit ?

~~~
Valmar
A meritocracy isn't unfair by definition. It is an ideology based around what
people can achieve. These achievements don't have to be grand or anything.
They can be small and incremental. It is an ideology about empowering people,
no matter who they are.

Even those who don't have equal capability compared to others can contribute
in small ways, and so, they can indeed achieve merit based on merely doing
what they can do, even if it is small.

But, it is many small things that add up to massive changes, and that is what
a meritocracy is ~ just chip in where you can contribute, and you can make a
difference, no matter who you are.

However, there are issues where a meritocracy cannot be of use, and that is in
a system designed deliberately to exclude merit, and instead empower those who
prefer there be imbalance, injustice, and unfairness. SJW ideologies which
seek to belittle and mute those they consider the "enemy" are like this.

------
jlebrech
Why are we telling women do do STEM if that's not what they want to do, we
should be supporting women want to do that. For example more entry level roles
and considering women for those.

~~~
bufferoverflow
Isn't treating women differently from men sexist by definition?

If we want equality, let's treat everyone equally. No special programs for any
gender.

We're constantly told that men and women are the same, and that you can even
switch between them any time you want, but then we hear the complaints that
gender X does better/worse at task Z. This narrative doesn't make any sense to
me.

~~~
Valmar
Men and women obviously aren't the same, no matter how much gnashing of teeth
of matter occurs, because both have their strengths in different areas,
according to their overall psychology.

Men and women are psychologically-different, and no amount of trying to force
a desperate sameness will change that. In fact, it might even cause people to
want to be even more different than before.

The SJWs campaign for "sameness" but act like the complete opposite.

Maybe they're just in denial of who they truly are, and are unconsciously
asking for help and recognition that they truly matter, but cannot help but
unconsciously portray this in a destructive manner for all to see, except
themselves and their blind peer group.

~~~
tnzn
"men and women are different" is such a broad statement you sure could say it
and then say "duh anyone who disagrees is bullshit". Here's big news : blue
eyed and brown eyed people are different. As for the rest of your text, it's
all just broad statements with very little scientific value, since theybare
then again broad claims. Girls prefer pink, y'know. So natural.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
There are consistent, globally found physical[1] and psychological
differences[2] between the sexes, so it's a bit more complicated than
comparing people with different eye colors.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology)

------
thriftwy
Still no charts. I don't see them communicating with me.

------
afroboy
I just discovered that where i work (Algeria) there is hidden rule in hiring
new devs that wasn't known publicly it's simply no women, seriously i work
with 20 men for more than two years and i just discovered that our head of
recruitment doesn't hire woman at all no matter how she's talented because of
so many reason most of them are racist but kind are hard to argue with him
like if woman get married she will stop working and yes like 70% of this
happened all time when women get married her husband will force her to stop
working, even if she doesn't when she have kids she start working less hours i
mean like 50% less and the big reason that they can't handle pressure at all
specifically if production server is down she simply get cracked down and
where i live woman never work full time never that is like freaking problem
and they never work for additional hours (despite we pay for those hours). so
if he invest in woman she's going to get him like 30% productivity of men.

~~~
ekianjo
In a free market such companies would be at disadvantage versus the ones who
also attract top talent regardless of gender or race or any other demographic
criteria whatsoever.

~~~
RyanZAG
That's assuming an internal company culture couldn't be created based on
shared understanding that would lead to competitive advantage. Eg, if you
create a company with only black women, you may not necessarily get the very
best individuals, but you could create a very unique culture. That culture
could empower the whole team to work better with each other with the end
result being a more productive team even though individuals may be less
productive alone. It could also reduce turnover and increase job satisfaction,
leading to less time spent training and cheaper and more productive overtime
for the company.

Such a company could be at an advantage in a free market where there were no
rules on employment discrimination.

~~~
sharpneli
I tend to use a simple method to analyze a post. Switch the races and genders
around.

If in your post one would switch the term black woman into white man it would
become "If you create a company with only white men.... you could create a
very unique culture.". etc

That kind of post would cause a massive uproar for rather obvious reasons.

Yet it's interesting that these kind of posts don't.

~~~
RyanZAG
Yeah, it's unfortunate and that kind of uproar doesn't do anybody much good. I
chose black female on purpose for that reason, obviously, as it's acceptable
to consider such things intellectually in today's world.

We've stopped discussing some key concepts just because it's not allowed
anymore. I guess we need the bravery of enlightenment era philosophers once
again - to stand up to social pressure in the name of open ideas.

