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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 hav

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 9y ago
are you implying that male students who go for stem don't face bullying akin to being "geeky" or "nerds"? Please...
- hackpert 9y ago
  Oh no I'm sorry for the lack of clarity, that was certainly not what I'm implying. They do, and it's an extremely unfortunate problem that we ought to do something about. I was merely suggesting that these differences we tend to eagerly attribute to biology (a la James Damore) could very well be caused by a bunch of cultural and societal factors, of which bullying could be one. Also, over the last two decades there has been a significant increase in cultural recognition and representation of male "nerds," as people who belonged to that category have gained positions of influence, thanks to the tech boom in the 90s, which can sometimes inspire students to pursue their interests despite the bullying. The lack of such representative role models for young females is disconcerting and could even cause some people to be slightly more affected by the bullying, because perhaps they don't know a female who works in STEM or know of anyone in recent years who made it big, and simply didn't know it was possible to go against the social tide (which happens all too frequently.) All in all, I think there are a lot of factors at play here and reducing it to one cause seems like wilful ignorance at best.
- cholantesh 9y ago
  I would emphatically say that this isn't a thing in 2018.
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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 9y ago
        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 9y ago
        >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.
Sacho 9y ago
> 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. Sure, but we can also present similar anecdotal evidence of visible forms of bullying from fellow male students for having geeky interests. So, where does that leave us, really? Similar to your criticism about jumping to causative conclusions, you've determined that this passive-aggressive bullying is the case of gender roles rather than the more obvious case of bullying nerds.
koonsolo 9y ago
Ask around in your social circle, both men an women: "Would you like to have a job where you sit all day at the computer?". Then calculate the percentages. That's "natural inclinations" for you.
- hackpert 9y ago
  Sure, you may be right about a percentage disparity, but how do we know that the factors that caused this disparity were not cultural in the first place, instilled by society as they were growing up? I also think that blanket questions such as "Would you like to have a job where you sit all day at the computer?" would be rather unhelpful because it really depends on the nature of the job. Both theoretical physicists and people working in building security have to sit at the computer all day, but that in no way implies that the nature of the job is similar.
mpweiher 9y ago
We don't have to go to claiming a specific cause. The simple fact is that if your claim is that discrimination is the primary cause for the lack of representation of women in STEM fields, then these data show that you are wrong. Not because we can eliminate subtle pressures with 100% certainty, we don't need to do that. The hypothesis is wrong because it makes the wrong prediction: if discrimination were the major cause, then more discrimination would lead to more unequal distribution. And the data show that it's the other way around: less discrimination leads to more unequal distribution. It's not a matter of degrees, it's a matter of sign, of the direction of the change. And that's effectively boolean, the sign is either positive or negative. The "discrimination" hypothesis predicts the sign is positive, in reality the sign is negative. Can't really get any more clear-cut than that.
- hackpert 9y ago
  Sure, this question definitely deserves further probing for other causative factors. But about discrimination, what stage are we talking about? During early childhood when males tend to be pushed towards mechanical toys and construction sets, and females towards caring for dolls? During university when you're repeatedly singled out as the token female in a STEM class by the professor? At the workplace? Discrimination can exist independently at multiple stages and these data only talk about equality on some levels, and that too only overt discrimination. I'm not saying it is (or is not) the primary cause, but it may be too early to rule it out entirely.
  - haberman 9y ago
    No one is arguing to rule it out entirely. Not even James Damore. The question is: how do we measure the problem of discrimination? Many people assume that we can measure discrimination by looking at the percentage of women in engineering and comparing it to the percentage of women in the general population. Many people believe that any difference between these numbers proves discrimination. But an increasing amount of evidence suggests that this a bad assumption.
trabant00 9y ago
> 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 Compared to Algeria, Albania, Turkey, Tunisia, UAE, Romania, etc? Please get your head of western social "justice" bubble. The factors that you think the article doesn't take into consideration are not explicitly there because they are implicit to everybody who really knows these countries.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  When I read the OP's paragraph it seems to be implying the opposite of what you seem to think. To me it's implying "Sweden isn't special, it has gender roles too..."

howlgram 9y ago

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

hackpert 9y ago
Oh no I'm sorry for the lack of clarity, that was certainly not what I'm implying. They do, and it's an extremely unfortunate problem that we ought to do something about. I was merely suggesting that these differences we tend to eagerly attribute to biology (a la James Damore) could very well be caused by a bunch of cultural and societal factors, of which bullying could be one. Also, over the last two decades there has been a significant increase in cultural recognition and representation of male "nerds," as people who belonged to that category have gained positions of influence, thanks to the tech boom in the 90s, which can sometimes inspire students to pursue their interests despite the bullying. The lack of such representative role models for young females is disconcerting and could even cause some people to be slightly more affected by the bullying, because perhaps they don't know a female who works in STEM or know of anyone in recent years who made it big, and simply didn't know it was possible to go against the social tide (which happens all too frequently.) All in all, I think there are a lot of factors at play here and reducing it to one cause seems like wilful ignorance at best.
cholantesh 9y ago
I would emphatically say that this isn't a thing in 2018.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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 9y ago
        >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.

Sacho 9y ago

> 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. Sure, but we can also present similar anecdotal evidence of visible forms of bullying from fellow male students for having geeky interests. So, where does that leave us, really? Similar to your criticism about jumping to causative conclusions, you've determined that this passive-aggressive bullying is the case of gender roles rather than the more obvious case of bullying nerds.

koonsolo 9y ago

Ask around in your social circle, both men an women: "Would you like to have a job where you sit all day at the computer?". Then calculate the percentages. That's "natural inclinations" for you.

hackpert 9y ago
Sure, you may be right about a percentage disparity, but how do we know that the factors that caused this disparity were not cultural in the first place, instilled by society as they were growing up? I also think that blanket questions such as "Would you like to have a job where you sit all day at the computer?" would be rather unhelpful because it really depends on the nature of the job. Both theoretical physicists and people working in building security have to sit at the computer all day, but that in no way implies that the nature of the job is similar.

mpweiher 9y ago

We don't have to go to claiming a specific cause. The simple fact is that if your claim is that discrimination is the primary cause for the lack of representation of women in STEM fields, then these data show that you are wrong. Not because we can eliminate subtle pressures with 100% certainty, we don't need to do that. The hypothesis is wrong because it makes the wrong prediction: if discrimination were the major cause, then more discrimination would lead to more unequal distribution. And the data show that it's the other way around: less discrimination leads to more unequal distribution. It's not a matter of degrees, it's a matter of sign, of the direction of the change. And that's effectively boolean, the sign is either positive or negative. The "discrimination" hypothesis predicts the sign is positive, in reality the sign is negative. Can't really get any more clear-cut than that.

hackpert 9y ago
Sure, this question definitely deserves further probing for other causative factors. But about discrimination, what stage are we talking about? During early childhood when males tend to be pushed towards mechanical toys and construction sets, and females towards caring for dolls? During university when you're repeatedly singled out as the token female in a STEM class by the professor? At the workplace? Discrimination can exist independently at multiple stages and these data only talk about equality on some levels, and that too only overt discrimination. I'm not saying it is (or is not) the primary cause, but it may be too early to rule it out entirely.
- haberman 9y ago
  No one is arguing to rule it out entirely. Not even James Damore. The question is: how do we measure the problem of discrimination? Many people assume that we can measure discrimination by looking at the percentage of women in engineering and comparing it to the percentage of women in the general population. Many people believe that any difference between these numbers proves discrimination. But an increasing amount of evidence suggests that this a bad assumption.

trabant00 9y ago

> 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 Compared to Algeria, Albania, Turkey, Tunisia, UAE, Romania, etc? Please get your head of western social "justice" bubble. The factors that you think the article doesn't take into consideration are not explicitly there because they are implicit to everybody who really knows these countries.

bryanlarsen 9y ago
When I read the OP's paragraph it seems to be implying the opposite of what you seem to think. To me it's implying "Sweden isn't special, it has gender roles too..."