Sexism In Science 467
An anonymous reader writes with news of a recent paper about the bias among science faculty against female students. The study, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, asked professors to evaluate applications for a lab manager position. The faculty were given information about fictional applicants with randomly-assigned genders. They tended to rate male applicants as more hire-able than female applicants, and male names also generated higher starting salary and more mentoring offers. This bias was found in both male and female faculty. "The average salary suggested by male scientists for the male student was $30,520; for the female student, it was $27,111. Female scientists recommended, on average, a salary of $29,333 for the male student and $25,000 for the female student."
Only in science? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have worked at many places to know women are generally discriminated against based on wage.
In the USA, there was an argument that passing a law making it against the rule for employees to talk about pay wage and women getting raises to the same level as their male counterparts would actually bankrupt the system and other stupid excuses.
Conversely, I have a Brother-In-Law who wanted to become a nurse and experienced sexism in Nursing school from a teacher and sexism at his job.
So it isnt just one sided, but it probably depends on the field. Male dominated/Female sexism, Female Dominated/Male Sexism.
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have worked at many places to know women are generally discriminated against based on wage.
Are you sure of that or is it just your impression? I can believe that there is a bias among certain people, but I also know that studies were made that disputed the claim that women make less then men on average. The key is comparing apples to apples i.e. not just comparing people doing the same job, but comparing people with the same number of years of full time experience of comparable quality. Comparing workers of the same age in the same job fail because women take more time off in their careers to raise children and therefore have on average less work experience than men. Comparing overall years of experience also fails because women work part time much more often than men. Sounds obvious but a lot of studies that "show" that women are discriminated against actually suffer from one or both of the above problems.
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Informative)
Comparing workers of the same age in the same job fail because women take more time off in their careers to raise children and therefore have on average less work experience than men. Comparing overall years of experience also fails because women work part time much more often than men. Sounds obvious but a lot of studies that "show" that women are discriminated against actually suffer from one or both of the above problems.
And that is a problem. Women are the only ones who can have kids, and we (as a society) obviously need kids and most people accept that facilitating the creation of families is a good thing. Women are thus faced with a choice between harming their career or not having a family, where as men can need not make that choice. Children are not just a lifestyle choice (we need them) and by supporting women who have them men are just doing their fair share.
It isn't just less experience either. Women find it harder to get jobs in the first place when they are of child baring age because employers worry that they will invest in them only for them to take a lot of time off or even stop working completely. Even women who work while their children are young are seen as distracted and unwilling to put in the long hours men might.
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Funny)
and sex shouldn't matter.
You sound like my ex-wife.
Actual data: wage disparity is real (Score:5, Informative)
A study [theatlanticcities.com] that took into account education, hours worked, and skill into account found that:
Keep in mind that skill is not entirely an independent variable. People who are promoted to more resonsible positions have the opportunity to learn from the experience, whereas those who are not promoted don't. In other words, the effects of bias are likely to compound.
So the statistics above may understate the problem. The unadjusted numbers are truly horrendous. For law, men get paid more than twice as much ($138k vs $66k), which seems dramatically out of proportion to slightly more schooling (17.5 years vs 15.6 years) and a significant but not huge gap in hours worked (46.6 vs 40.9 hours - I don't know about you, but I personally find a dramatic drop-off in marginal productivity as hours increase).
Notice also the gap in education. Some comments here are suggesting that education is a domain of reverse descrimination, but that's not the story told by the wage gap.
I must echo the request of others here: if you have evidence to the contrary, plese provide it.
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Negotiation aren't part of the study. that variable was removed. Read the study.
It's the same resume, just with different names attached.
" on average, men are better at negotiating salaries than women are?"
Offers are higher for men.
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Neither parent quoted any studies.. So neither side really has any evidence.. if anything, the politicization of science is the real problem here. When this happens, no one believes anyone's stats or their analyses regardless of correctness.
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Neither parent quoted any studies..
Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students [pnas.org]
Full text and supporting data "Free via Open Access."
Re:Only in science? (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, most salary gains come through negotiation. Men tend to negotiate more aggressively than women, so it logically follows that men would tend to get higher salaries than women. I've met women in the same field as me with salaries as high or higher than mine; it's no coincidence that they were aggressive negotiators.
If person X will accept the job at $N and person Y will accept an equivalent job for $N-5000, why on earth should the employer pay person Y $N?
Sorry, but this is one situation where I believe the person feeling they're discriminated against is at fault. Want more? Ask for it. Not happy with the offer? Don't take it. I'll bet you'll also find that shy/introverted men tend to make less than extroverted men, also as a result of trying to avoid confrontations (read: negotiating).
I'm sure there's employer-caused discrimination in the hiring process in many places, but I don't think that comes through in wages. There are of course counterexamples all over the place, but I'm referring to the overall trend.
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Informative)
"Through negotiation"?
Damn, you must have worked in very small places, or only as a consultant. That simply isn't true for 90% of the jobs out here, esp. for raises. The only time or two I've ever seen a "negotiation" for a raise involved a critical person quitting, and then taking a higher offer to stay.
mark
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but the study suggests that the *suggested starting salary* was significantly lower for women than it was for men - for the exact same information packet about the candidate, with the only difference being whether you were hiring "Mike Smith" or "Michelle Smith."
If you are lowering your opening number by $5000 just because the applicant is a woman, that's not the fault of the woman. Even if the female candidate is a negotiator to shame Henry Kissinger, she has to somehow negotiate back that $5000 you took off the table on account of her having a vagina before she even reaches parity with what you were willing to offer a man as an opening figure. It's very facile to suggest "if you want more, just ask!" But when the expected opening number is $5k lower for a female, she has to be $5k worth of negotiations better than the male candidate just to be his equal in pay.
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He didn't make one. He just said it happens to both sides. Stop bashing strawmen.
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And I didnt make that point for any kind of equivalency, anyone with a brain knows most businesses are male dominated. But sexism exists everywhere.
Re:Only in science? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand why you don't believe men when they say there is little discrimination
Same reason I don't believe white people when they say there is little discrimination against blacks or hispanics.
First, because I'm not blind so I know there is.
Second, because not being the target of it, not being sensitive to it, and wanting to believe that everything they have is due solely to meritocracy, means their opinion on the non-existence of oppression of peoples who aren't them is basically meaningless.
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Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is actually a massive need for male teachers at the elementary level right now. Why? Because boys need male role models and often don't have one because either dad is off working all day or they don't have a dad at all. And if boys don't have the real thing in front of them they're going to learn by what they find elsewhere (television, movies, older boys) which tends to have negative consequences.
Re:Only in science? (Score:4, Insightful)
Girls need male role models too.
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No, these kids don't need male role models at all. Men teaching young children are going to be perceived as possible sexual predators, and are in a lot of danger as unfounded accusations can ruin their lives (and this has happened many times in fact). It's better for men to avoid this field altogether. Will this be bad for society in the long term? Of course, but we reap what we sow. We don't deserve to survive as a society if we can't figure out how to fix this problem of pedophilia-phobia, and I don'
Re:Only in science? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is all generalization of course, but I disagree.
Yes, we do hear of female schoolteachers having sex with their male students. But in most of these cases, it's a 20-something teacher with boys who are at least 15 years old, frequently something like a 17-year-old boy and a 25-year-old teacher. There really isn't that much of an age gap, and the boy(s) in question is well past puberty and almost a legal adult. But when was the last time you heard of a woman molesting a pre-pubescent boy? I don't think I've ever heard of such a thing, ever. But this happens all the time with men; they frequently molest prepubescent boys and girls (esp. if they're Catholic priests). Both men and women get sexually involved with older teenagers of the opposite sex; this really isn't that rare, and I think it's a problem that our society and laws don't seem to draw that much of a distinction between post-pubescent and pre-pubescent children. I'm not saying it should be OK for a 50-year-old dude to talk a 17-year-old girl into sex, but there's a big difference between that and him molesting a 9-year-old girl. The 17-year-old is bigger, stronger, can defend herself, is nearly an adult and understands sex (and probably isn't even a virgin these days) and is much more likely to be able to handle the situation; she's not utterly defenseless like the 9-year-old. And it's (remotely) possible the 17-year-old was consenting; this concept is utterly ridiculous in the case of the 9-year-old.
So no, men don't have a monopoly on the predation of all minors, but I think they do have a monopoly on the predation of prepubescent minors.
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same reason a 30 year old woman wants to spend all day in a room filled with first grade boys: some people actually enjoy teaching.
Can we stop parroting the media's current trend of "all adult males want to molest children"?
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I'm actually reasonably good at talking to kids. It's really not too difficult, you get down to their level and let them lead the discussion. With boys, it's pretty easy because they like talking about Batman, and hey, I like Batman too. Also, I'm an Electrical Engineer just like Iron Man. Kids like talking to adults, it makes them feel like adults. But sadly, adults don't like it when you talk to their kids. Girls like talking about superheroes too, and they have favorites, but there's huge pressure
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It's not just the media, it's all of our society. The media is just cateringcreating to our societal attitudes.
This is what the media does. It's practically its only role in our society.
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Informative)
Reminds me of a similar study where they sent out identical resumes, with two random changes 1) names that "sounded" white vs black and (Dan vs Jamal) and 2) felony conviction status.
You can probably guess which resumes got the most and least callbacks. The sad part is who got the second most. "White" convicts. Yeah.
Re:Only in science? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having a more common name in general..helps. Having a very bizzare and strange sounding name...will often keep you from being hired over someone else.
The show mentioned, that black and white names...until only a couple or so decades ago, were similar, but in the late 60's and 70's you started seeing black parents coming up with very unusual and stand out naming habits (Shaquillabonno, etc)....
It may sound sad to you that a name can do this to you, but you need to face facts that it does. Your are likely to get called in for that CPA interview if your name is Jack.....and not so much if your name is Rain, Ja'Quaelah , Sting or Cher.....
If you're a parent....have a heart and try to give you kids a name that will help them out later in life....right or wrong, that's just the way things are and sometimes you have to accept that.
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I believe my fake Son Knucklenuts McFlister would agree I named him correctly.
Root causes (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists are interested in making more scientists. That's why mentoring exists. Generally, females do not progress as far along the scientific career track as males do. They are just as smart and devoted -- up until the point when they have kids. Then science becomes less important to them, and they stop pushing so hard to become professors / researchers / Nobel winners / whatever.
So, if you're going to spend countless hours teaching a student, which one would you pick? The male student, who's more likely to push his career like crazy and become a great collaborator and publish lots of papers with you? Or the female student, who has a 50/50 shot that she'll suddenly stop caring at age 25~30, right when her career would be taking off?
Sexist? Absolutely - and this kind of thinking contributes to undervaluing females in science everywhere. Even brilliant ones who aren't going to have kids still face this bias. It's a disaster. But it has a logical cause. Until it's possible to have family-friendly science careers, this is unlikely to change. Right now, there are too many scientists competing for too few spots. The males are going to win, because they'll (generally speaking) put their careers before their families.
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Re:Root causes (Score:4, Interesting)
Man, did you even read the paper? A huge part of why women aren't encouraged to stay in science and stick it through is because of the awful treatment that they get when they're young and starting out. Only an utter masochist or someone committed beyond most human reasoning would stick it out in an area where they offer you $5000 less to start *before they even meet you*.
On every metric that they measured, women were getting the short shrift (even worse, people with feminine sounding names; 'Michelle' is also a man's name if you're French): money, mentoring and decisions of competence. For a lab management position that would probably just be a stepping stone through academia.
Women are the ones that bear children, it's true, but there are Scandinavian countries where the men also get a significant amount of parental leave, allowing the mother to get back to work if she so chooses and letting the father stay home with the kids. The problem isn't with WOMEN, the problem is with the way we TREAT women. Maybe if we thought of them as equal and competent workers, we'd find ways to manage the inconveniences of life that all of us have to deal with.
There are a great number of things that men are more likely to do that are deleterious to their health and ability to show up to work, but we don't seem to care about that. Blaming women for having kids doesn't make a single thing better. Societally, we just don't hold women in much esteem, and that's the real issue in the end. We can fix this, we just need to stop giving the same excuses and saying, "Well, we've tried nothing, and now we're all out of ideas!"
That's funny right there (Score:5, Funny)
Males, less sexist against females than other females.
Re:That's funny right there (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a number of reasons I can imagine this evolving. I would imagine a thought process like this could cause it: "I worked so hard to get where I am, proved beyond all my male peers how skillful I am. If she's not going to prove herself she's not going to get anywhere in this field."
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Or it might be simply that the men have the possibility of appearing sexist more to the fore of their thoughts and thus move to higher salaries for women applicants to avoid it.
Re:That's funny right there (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, hey, that also means that STEM careers are less sexist, too! I just heard on NPR the other day that women only make 70% of what men do. But if you're a woman and you go into STEM, run those numbers, and hey! If you're being hired by another women, you'll make 85%, a whole 15% more than other careers. For top score, get hired by a man, and you're up to 89% of what your male colleagues are making!
So good job, STEM!
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NPR is the least unbiased news source in the country. You might want to pay attention to how the interview every politician, regardless of party.
Seriously,. pay attention. Had the said Rachel Maddow, you would have had a point.
And no,l it's about 70% today. it can vary 5% or so for most professional careers. It's pretty well documented.
Oh, right, I forgot. Reality, facts and data are an evil liberal plot.
Re:That's funny right there (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife complains about other women in the workplace far more than about men. According to her, a large contingent of women in the workplace are backstabbing jezebels, and she'd much rather work with men. Every once in a while, there's some freak of a man who bothers her (usually some creep who can't seem to understand that she's not interested in some fat, ugly old man and wants to put his hands all over her; the fact that she's married doesn't seem to be a factor for these men). But they're rare, a small, small portion of the total number of men she meets. But with women, it's more like half of them are evil bitches trying to hurt her somehow to improve their own position.
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Unfortunately, I think this may be a big part of it. A lot of women seem to have a big problem with trying to hurt other women in the workplace out of jealousy, and prettier women get it much worse.
Yea, especially if the hiring manager is (or at least, considers herself) attractive as well. I assume it boils down to a primitive breeding instinct... amazing how much control our loins have on our behavior even after 135,000+ years of evolution, wouldn't you agree?
Being lucky enough to be married to one rather gorgeous woman (and that's not just bias, she's an independently confirmed looker), I've got quite a bit of second hand knowledge on how pretty women treat/are treated by their female coworkers.
While we're talking about sexism in Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's talk about the complete lack of busaries/scholarships/grants for men in Science. At the university I studied at in British Columbia, there were literally a dozen monetary awards for female science undergrads, but absolutely nothing for men. In fact, the *only* award in Science that was open to both sexes was a $500 bursary for people of Scandinavian descent who also owned a woodlot in British Columbia. Seriously.
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You think perhaps that's a consequence of people observing the problem of sexism and attempting to do something about it? Yeesh.
Re:While we're talking about sexism in Science (Score:5, Insightful)
So the solution to the issue of excluding people from stuff based on their gender is... to exclude people from stuff based on their gender?
Sociology is funny.
i never understood this thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
racist policies kept blacks out of career and education opportunities, with longstanding consequences. so: affirmative action
sexism is real and keeps women under a glass ceiling: so corrective hiring policies
classism is real and simple economics tells us money naturally gravitates to a few players. so: progressive tax rates to correct what otherwise would result in all wealth in society flowing to a few ultrawealthy
why are these simple prudent policies such a giant brainfuck for some people? why are they so hostile to these ideas?
Re:i never understood this thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
One way to think of it is a bit like a murder investigation -- look for motive. The very people who benefit most from anti-egalitarianism are people who occupy privileged positions which would vanish in a more egalitarian society -- the wealthy CEOs, princes, and oligarchs of all forms. Thus, they have the greatest incentive (and are in fact pretty much the only ones who have an incentive at all) to promote anti-egalitarian sentiment. It is, however, easy to promote simply because people, especially in the middle of the economic spectrum (petit-bourgeoisie, or the "small business owner" in many cases), occupy a precarious class position which they are constantly having to fight to maintain. Part of the result of this is a general social separation from the people directly below them (the working class), which is a natural result of fighting hard to stay above working-class people and to live out, in the USA, the myths of the American Dream and social advancement. Thus, while they might not instigate anti-egalitarian classism, they are more susceptible to aiding those who do instigate it and becoming the lackeys of the very group above them which utilizes them as a shield.
One way to consider this is to imagine three people, A, B, and C. Person A is a slave, Person B is a servant, and Person C is a master. In this situation, Person C might use Person B to keep Person A in bondage by threatening to eliminate Person B's (relatively more) privileged position. Even if it would be more advantageous for A and B to unite against C, this seldom happens, for a variety of reasons, often related to the machinations of Person C.
Even more insidious, especially in the cases of sexism and racism, is when people who occupy roughly the same class position are pitted against each other. It is advantageous to rulers for a permanent underclass to exist (as black people and women have been throughout the history of the United States, often the lowest of the low) because they can be exploited most readily. The easiest way to maintain this is to sponsor bigotry that will keep this group separated from other groups -- black from white, for instance. Then, this underclass will have to fight almost entirely alone to gain even a modicum of freedom, rather than being helped by their brothers and sisters to gain it. Why? Because our society today forces people to be competitive or be destroyed, rather than to unite in a non-competitive way. Thus, black workers gaining more rights could be seen as a threat to the privileged position of some white workers, and so forth. The easiest way to sustain a system is to throw a few scraps to a few select groups, and in doing that to turn them into defenders of the system for fear of losing their privileges.
Re:i never understood this thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Sexism and racism are making decisions based on someone's sex. Affirmative action IS racism. Female only scholarships and discriminatory hiring practices ARE sexism.
You're right, all those can be effective at doing things like evening out the demographics in a particular job. The people for whom they're "a giant brainfuck" are not convinced that correcting metrics, treating the symptoms, at the expense of more, overt, blatant, sanctioned racism/sexism is the way to go. In fact, it seems like they may have a point - discriminatory practices tend to have the effect of encouraging more discrimination. "She only got the job because she's a woman and they had to hire her" and the like.
A better approach is to actually address the problem. Identify sexism and racism, of any type, when they happen, and stop them. Make such things socially unacceptable. THAT's how you eliminate discrimination.
it already is socially unacceptable (Score:3, Insightful)
i mean murder is obviously wrong, but it still happens. do you think making murder socially unacceptable will stop it? we're dealing with a kind of criminality, a transgression against someone else
what does this even mean? this is a load of crap. something like affirmative action or progressive taxation
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" we're dealing with a kind of criminality, a transgression against someone else"
mm, not really. A lot of it isn't even a conscious decision. People do it without knowing they do it. They deny it, but when you show them the facts, they either attack the facts, or realize that they don't actual control every decision on a conscious level. Protip: Most you decision aren't on the conscious level. They are predetermined before they 'raise to the level' of conscious thought. Sure, you will reason the decision a
Re:i never understood this thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
discriminatory practices tend to have the effect of encouraging more discrimination. "She only got the job because she's a woman and they had to hire her" and the like.
Actually in my 25+ years in the work place I never heard anyone make that comment that wasn't a sexist bigot to begin with.
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Re:While we're talking about sexism in Science (Score:4, Insightful)
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What planet are you living on? Seriously, while I can understand your frustration somewhat, that's really no excuse to make shit up.
That's not what statistics
Re:While we're talking about sexism in Science (Score:4, Interesting)
This is particulary bad in Statistics and Genetics (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember when one of my colleagues in Statistics brought in her son, who was amazed that there were actually male scientists in US statistics, biostatistics, and medical genetics.
Up to running into a few male post-grads in the lab, he had only seen women in these fields. ... oh, wait, you mean male sexism. Yeah, might be a problem back east. Even the UW Engineering school is starting to see an uptick in women engineering Doctoral and Undergraduate students. Less so in Computer Science, sadly.
Adapt. Or Adapt.
There is no other choice.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More bias from women than from men, against wom (Score:5, Insightful)
True, it refutes that male malice is to blame, but it also affirms that women do have a problem with bias.
So, perhaps we should put the blame and counter-blame aside and talk about solutions.
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This is about testosterone vs estrogen, and strident sexist attitudes based on fear and delusion. You're talking common sense and egalitarianism, which has no place here. Soon you'll be trying to let women control their own bodies.
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Re:More bias from women than from men, against wom (Score:5, Insightful)
Sex-blinded applications (Score:3)
Now that we know that there is a problem, and that the problem is not helped by changing the sex of the hirers, we have to minimize the bias by hiding the sex of the applicants during the application process for as long as possible.
There was a similar problem in hiring for orchestras [repec.org]. They started doing blind auditions (players behind a screen) and a lot of the hiring bias went away.
The biggest problem will be getting scientists to admit that this is a serious issue that won't go away without effort. This
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In many societies and cultures, the actual status quo tends to be enforced by women themselves, particularly on other women. That is not to say men are not involved, but some women can definitely form a supporting structure for their culture. That tends to be ignored because all women are always considered to be the oppressed group. However, some women obtain roles and benefits in those power structures and a threat to the existing order is a threat to their position as well, even if they are in an overa
Re:More bias from women than from men, against wom (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't it interesting that women seem to have more prejudice against equal salary for women, than women do?
Makes perfect sense - while male scientists may suspect female scientists are less qualified, the female scientists know it for sure!
(Note: This post is +1 Funny, not -1 Flamebait.)
Re:More bias from women against pay (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not surprising at all. If you are hiring someone to work under you, the amount you would offer to pay them will be influenced by how much you make yourself (anchoring). If women are paid less than men, it's perfectly natural for them to offer lower salaries to the people that will work under them.
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Yes, but women didn't offer (significantly) lower salaries. They offered women lower salaries.
It's logical (Score:5, Funny)
Women need less money because they tend to marry men who earn more than they do on average.
For men it's the reverse -- they need more because they tend to marry women who earn less than they do on average.
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Wow. That's actually hilarious.
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Women need less money because they tend to marry men who earn more than they do on average.
For men it's the reverse -- they need more because they tend to marry women who earn less than they do on average.
Well state, Mr. Ozzie Nelson.
Re:It's logical (Score:4, Interesting)
In general, women tend to prefer men who are of higher status than themselves and there is some social stigma to "marrying down".. Men don't seem to have that preference, nor stigma, in the aggregate. As women's and men's incomes fall in line with one another, women tend to become more choosey, chasing after a shrinking pool of high status men, or so the male based blogosphere would have you believe.
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Most awesome comment of the day.
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Wow. It's not often that you come across a post on Slashdot that was made in the 1950's. Looks like someone took off with Doc Brown's DeLorean and hopped on over to 2012.
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Which explains why gay marriage is often banned. How would employers know what to pay?
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Circular reasoning would be well and good if we assume they have equivalent employment; however many women have part-time jobs or lower pay careers, for example as hostesses in restaurants (a step above teenager waitresses) or customer service, shift management in retail (a good $15-$20/hr), cashiers at K-mart, etc. A lot of women are part-time workers or seasonal workers, and stay home to raise children when they start having children.
Women do indeed tend to marry men who make more money; men do indeed t
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This study was on women applying for the same jobs with the same exact skill sets as men.
In addition, your statement of most men tend not to marry women who are CEO's, or other successful professionals is completely accurate, but the same can be said about most women seeing as the average male is a high school graduate with an income on the order of 30k a year. The demographic you are referring to of making 80K a year or more represents the top 10% in terms of income, on a statistical basis alone, this demo
The real gender GAP (Score:5, Insightful)
The more important issue is that we're trying to "combat STEM crisis" when both men and women have more financial incentive to manage a GAP [glassdoor.com] than manage a laboratory.
Back to the kitchen I go... (Score:2, Funny)
To go cook dinner barefoot, and wait for my husband to get home and knock me up again.
An Important Study (Score:5, Informative)
This is a very important finding, and something people need to be aware of, but I also want to add another variable to the equation: part of the reason women don't command higher salaries is because they don't demand higher salaries. I don't want to take the sexist position that women need to act more like men to achieve salary equality, but I do get extremely frustrated by the fact that my female peers seem to lack the will to fight for equal pay. My father had to coach my mother into demanding a higher salary when she got a job as a professor. I've had to coach my sister to ask for higher pay, and I've done the same for female coworkers, where I have even taken them aside and told them my salary to see their eyes bug-out and then get angry at the injustice of our different pay-scales.
Yes, women and men discriminate against women concerning salaries and capabilities. It's scientifically proven, and it's something we all need to be cognizant of so we can work for a just society; however, women also need to stop allowing themselves to be discriminated against. I have seen many women go from unequal pay to getting what they deserve simply by having some self-confidence in their value to the company and demanding their worth when the opportunity arises to ask for it. If the boss still refuses, sue the discriminatory #$%@.
so where is the control group (Score:4)
What happened with the ones with gender left ambiguous?
(the paper itself will not open for me, for some reason.)
They Pyrex Ceiling in the lab (Score:2)
Really, this was no surprise years ago, but is disappointing to see it still going on.
Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if the females were basing the salary figures off of a relative number based on their own salary? That would explain the bias from them, if they were subject to it in their own hiring.
Additional conditions (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to disagree with anything in the paper and certainly not with the message, but personally, I would definitely have wanted to see at least one more condition: same resumes with no names at all. That should give nice baseline against which to compare both conditions (e.g. are female salaries marked down or are male salaries marked up).
Also, I wonder what would happen if one were to replace the names with simply an indication of gender (male/female). Unlike the neutral condition, I don't think this would improve the study... I'm just curious if the gender is enough or if there's something specific about reading male vs female names.
Great Summary. But where does this go from here. (Score:5, Interesting)
So for me the question is that here the study was on name bias based on gender of names. So there are some obvious followup questions here, like were there gender ambiguous names in the study Like Terry, and if so how did they did do. For the participants what sort of pre-esxisitng person to name associations did they have with those names. (i.e. Rather then being a direct gender bias could this have been that people are more likely to have name biases for female names then male names [and by name bias I mean things like not trusting people named Jennifer].) Further going beyond the direct follow up I wonder if there are biases in styles of names. Does Jim go over better or worse the James, If there is a skew towards formal or informal names how do people who's names don't have a clear nickname (like Derek) end up in the whole situation. To me this just opens the doors to more questions, and since the study did not find that the bias was particular to either gender of reviewer, I think the obvious thing to ask is, so what's really going on here.
I think that this is a really important area, because science is best served by diversity, and am a little disappointed that they published their results at this stage because it potentially taints further study into this issue. I think that if we are going to tackle the problem we really need to understand it rather then trying fixes that are ignorant of the root causes.
Woman make better lab managers - IMHO. (Score:4, Interesting)
During my time in academia; Ph.D. student -> post doc -> professor, I always felt that women made better lab managers than men - so I think the people sampled in this study are completely wrong. At the risk of sounding like I'm stereotyping, the female managers tended to balance multiple concurrent projects better and kept the environment more harmonious and inclusive. The only times I saw issues with this type of situation was when it was a women-only environment. The most productive labs I witnessed, irregardless of the gender of the PI, had a female lab manager and a balance of female and male employees/students. I had lab mangers of both genders and paid them based on their level of experience as dictated by the university HR.
Just my $0.02 (Score:5, Informative)
Is this really sexism? (Score:3)
e.g. What are the statistics on male researchers who start off in a field, get married, have kids, then retire to stay at home to take care of the kids; versus women who do the same? Maybe the faculty are automatically factoring in the likelihood that the hired lab manager will quit the job at some point in the future, forcing them to expend additional resources hiring and training a new manager. And this is deemed more likely to happen with female hirees than with male.
That's not to say it has to be this way. For the disabled, we've already decided as a society that the additional cost of giving the disabled equal access to job opportunities (handicap access, assistance equipment, etc) is worth paying. Yes treating them equally will cost us more, but it's a cost we're willing to pay for the results it generates. I don't see a problem with that. But it's something society should knowingly choose to implement, not something snuck in under the pretense of preventing "unjustified" discrimination.
Re:Is this really sexism? (Score:5, Informative)
It depends on what you mean by "sexism."
Back in 1999, MIT ran thorough study on gender differences among the faculty. It's an interesting read [mit.edu]. One of the striking findings was the consensus that "this is not what we expected gender bias to look like."
Put another way, women's concerns in 2012 are not the same as what they were in 1970 or 1920. It could be your working definition of sexism doesn't describe the problems of women in science.
Females beat men ... (Score:3)
... when females act like men.
Crumbs - I can't find the link to the studies but here's the summary: When american women adopt the same value systems as american men they tend to outperform men. More specifically, when they make money, work, and recognition their top motivations, they excel in pretty much every supposedly man-dominated field; education, engineering, business, etc. Especially when it comes to small business owners.
So why aren't they running the world? Apparently most women have a different priority order, and things like family, time flexibility, vacation scheduling, personal happiness (one area where women absolutely CRUSH men), and one of the biggest factors: having children. There was an examination of women in business, especially CEO's and VP's, and what they showed was that when qualifications were identical, women made more and generally had better success growing the company/raising stock prices/whatever it was they were tasked with. However, they made up only a very small percent of the CEOs. Why? Because many of them chose to have kids, and didn't have the same qualifications, like an unbroken 40 year long track record of management, as they took time off, or made their career second to being a mother.
In some ways, the gender bias is in the eye of the beholder; the real issue is your priorities and how you work to achieve them. Granted, due to widespread generalization (which may be accurate), women have been sterotyped as less dedicated to a career, and end up earning less, starting for less, achieving less, making the men-stereotype priorities higher hurdles.
It would be interesting to rank people based on how well they've achieved their priorities. Not that it excuses deliberate or accidental sexism, but it may result in questioning equal opportunity regulations. If you achieve all your goals in life, and having gainful employment is not one of those goals, artificially privileging you to get it over vs. someone who prioritizes it but doesn't achieve it - or other goals - on the basis of gender or race seems a bit .. unfairly discriminatory.
In the future (Score:3)
Names should simply be GUID's.
Should say 'applicants', not 'applications' (Score:3)
From comments here, a lot of people seem to be under the impression that the subjects of the study were looking at a resume or something similar. From the actual paper, they were given an evaluation of the applicant written by a third party, not something that was supposed to have been written by the applicant. The summary is misleading when it says they were asked to evaluate "applications for a lab manager position" -- it should say "applicants for a lab manager position".
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You assume managers are totally rational. I wish managers were totally rational.
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There is a biological factor at play as well: Women do get pregnant from time to time, and men don't.
It may seem unfair or unjust, but what I stated is just a fact and nothing more.
Now what does that mean for an employer? Sometimes - more often for women than for men - it means your employee will be out of the office on pregnancy leave. And sometimes, after said leave the employee will not return for a few month to a few years. Sometimes never.
Of course, not all women are in this situation, and they all pay
You don't know how to be successful. (Score:3)
And who knew the world wasn't fair? Go figure. Sometimes you just have to work harder.
Nobody gets rich by working harder. Sure, you can pick up double hours, but at best that just doubles your income.
You get rich by working EVILER, or in a smaller number of cases, smarter.
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Good point though, this kind of thing could be flame-bait or it could be a real effect. If the numbers match up and females consistently score lower on exams and problem solving then it may not be a sexist bias so much as a failing in the educational method or testing techniques - or it could (shock!) simply be that statistically women aren't as good at scienc
Nope, still sexist. (Score:5, Informative)
Good point though, this kind of thing could be flame-bait or it could be a real effect. If the numbers match up and females consistently score lower on exams and problem solving then it may not be a sexist bias so much as a failing in the educational method or testing techniques
If men have better exam scores and men get paid more, that isn't necessarily sexist.
But that wasn't what this study did. This study offered the same set of applications and randomized the gender of the applicants. The resulting disparity is thus entirely attributable to gender bias, i.e. the individual accomplishments of each applicant was overridden by their gender.
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I believe you can also see it if your karma is high enough. I frequently see red articles, and I'm not a subscriber.
You obviously don't work with scientists. (Score:3)
I can say that about *one* of the female scientists that I work with*. It's actually more likely that a male scientist will go on paternity leave than a female on maternity.
My theory is that because of the gender bias, the females are either selected who aren't going to start a family, or they actively choose not to do so for fear of supporting the myth you claim. I can't say which one, as I'm involved in the hiring of scientists. Or, it's like in Idiocracy [imdb.com], where the smart ones are just less likely to h
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Male employees, on the other hand, are more likely to be alcoholic, more likely to have antisocial personality disorder, and more likely to either commit crimes or be victims of crime. All of these things can easily have negative effects on work performance.
As for maternity leave -- all of the people surveyed were in the US, which does not require women to be paid while on maternity leave. The Family Medical Leave Act, which creates that requirement, applies equally to male and female employees -- men a
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Women have a significantly higher chance of taking maternity leave than men. This does on average make them less valuable to an employer. My childfree girlfriend hates this.
It may be sexist and not politically correct to mention, but that doesn't mean it's not true.
The statement is undoubtedly true, whether or not it is consciously applied.
However, following that trail of logic a little further -- why wouldn't salaries start to equalize once women are past typical child-bearing age? If companies are afraid of lost-productivity in younger women, by age 40 or 45, you'd expect to see women's salaries evening up with mens. But studies show that doesn't happen.
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... except that it doesn't, really. Women moving into the workforce led to a greater need for childcare, which increased the number of available jobs. Women and blacks getting good-paying jobs, when previously they couldn't, bought more goods and services, which increased the number of available jobs. Same with gays.
Employment is not a zero-sum game; there's not a fixed number of possible job positions.