Research Reveals Low Exposure of Excellent Work By Female Scientists 245
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the University of Sheffield have found that high quality science by female academics is underrepresented in comparison to that of their male counterparts. The researchers analyzed the genders of invited speakers at the most prestigious gatherings of evolutionary biologists in Europe — six biannual congresses of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and found that male speakers outnumbered women. Even in comparison to the numbers of women and men among world class scientists – from the world top ranked institutions for life sciences, and authors in the top-tier journals Nature and Science - women were still underrepresented among invited speakers."
How does it compare? (Score:5, Insightful)
The researchers also found that women were underrepresented at the 2011 congress because men accepted invitations more often than women.
So it's not an ingrained sexism on the behalf of the congress, but according to the next quote based on biological differences:
The most demanding phase of a career in Biology, when it is important to communicate one’s findings, and to build networks with other scientists, coincides with the age at which women's fertility starts to decline, meaning it is their last chance to have a family - unlike men.
Re:How does it compare? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it has been shown that women tend to spend more time having and raising children rather than developing expertise in a career. It has also been found that Women who don't follow that biological plan typically do better than men it is just much more rare.
Re:How does it compare? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How does it compare? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it does in part. The first part says women are underrepresented in the recent shows. The second part that you quoted said that they _also_ found that in previous years women accepted less invitations than men.
I'd want to correlate it to something more along the lines the folks making the invitations looked at the previous accepts and declines or no answers, and declined to invite them again. So less women were invited this year because less women accepted in previous years.
Then they're trying to figure out why women didn't accept previously and theorized it was due to women wanting to have babies before it's too late.
Or at least that's how I read it.
[John]
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People want to find a small biological reason that may cause a fraction of the effect, because once it's found they can dismiss the idea that sexism is a contributor.
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As opposed to the people who try to find sexism *everywhere* they look, who are perfectly reasonable, objective individuals.
--Jeremy
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No, we want to take that into account so that women aren't given an unfair advantage.
It would be wonderful to be able to leave the workforce for a few years without losing ground on the people that have been there paying their dues and learning how the system works and generally contributing. Unfortunately, our biology is such that the brain is typically in much better shape during ones late 20s and early 30s where one has a balance between youth and experience. Throwing away half of it, is going to limit t
Re:How does it compare? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it has been shown that women tend to spend more time having and raising children rather than developing expertise in a career. It has also been found that Women who don't follow that biological plan typically do better than men it is just much more rare.
Over one third of women (in the US at least) never have a single child, so the population is small but not what I would call "Rare".
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It has also been found that Women who don't follow that biological plan typically do better than men it is just much more rare.
Well perhaps that is because the women in that particular group have an above average career drive, and are being compared to all men, not just those who share the same drive.
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It's as though part of your brain is uncomfortable with the possibility that high-performing men in the sciences, when compared to female peers with similar lifestyles, outperform those female peers.
It is a two way street. Either gender is a valid indicator of potential performance and therefore discrimination aga
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Yes, it has been shown that women tend to spend more time having and raising children rather than developing expertise in a career. It has also been found that Women who don't follow that biological plan typically do better than men it is just much more rare.
That's not correct - multiple studies have found that men are offered higher salaries than women for the exact same job fresh out of school, while childbearing isn't even yet a gleam in their eyes. Rather, like yourself, employers assume that women will spend more time having and raising children, and therefore don't make equal offers to them initially, believing that they'd waste money training them. This leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy, where couples who want to have children will look at the incomes
Re:How does it compare? (Score:5, Funny)
In other words, the women themselves are fucking up their own chances of peer exposure. No wait, that came out wrong.
In other words, the women are exposing themselves to their husband instead of their peers. No wait, that came out wrong too.
Ah, fuck it.
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The title says the exposure is low, not that it doesn't happen. So clearly, they need to hire a professional photographer to ensure it all comes out well exposed to prevent this waste of assets of biology.
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So clearly, they need to hire a professional photographer to ensure it all comes out well exposed to prevent this waste of assets of biology.
A lot of papers have a small photo of the researcher. I've noticed a trend for women scientists, especially younger women, to use increasingly more flirtatious photos.
I'm not complaining. It makes it easier to get through the literature. What more could you ask for -- a beautiful protein model and a beautiful woman.
I first noticed this when I looked up a paper by a noted influenza researcher. She was a lot younger than I expected. Her picture showed quite a bit of cleavage. Let's just say she was advertisin
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I've noticed this effect, but much more strongly, in the linkedin pictures for Russian developers. It's so noticeable that it makes one wonder what's really going on in those dev shops!
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The sexism in our society now comes from both genders and it is the attitude that roles which are about being aggressive, power centric, and domineering are more important and valuable than those focused on relationships,
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To be serious for a moment, your 2nd paragraph provided a jarring contrast to the first one.
Re:How does it compare? (Score:4, Interesting)
To be serious for a moment, your 2nd paragraph provided a jarring contrast to the first one.
How is there any contrast at all? In the first paragraph he is saying how he simply stating that he is supporting his wife while she is staying home with their child, but doesn't actually say that he is supportive of that decision. I have had similar conversations with my fiance about not wanting her to stay home with our future kids for financial reasons, and I don't think I am a monster for it (although she would end up getting her way if she feels strongly about it at that time).
And I am not sure why he is jaded enough to even bring up our ridiculous spousal support laws but he is not wrong. Our laws put the child's need far above the parents (not necessarily a bad thing), but that almost always means the primary breadwinner gets the shaft. There is nothing sexist or misogynistic about what he wrote. He just comes off as a very bitter person for even bringing up the topic.
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Our laws put the child's need far above the parents
If that was the case, then the law would not have allowed them to have children in the first place. A divorced couple is very bad for a child, but a fighting couple is even worse. It's the lesser of two evils, but neither should happen in a perfect world. Since this world isn't perfect, the next best thing is to have a social system that highly discourage unstable people from having children together.
I have no idea how one does that.
Re:How does it compare? (Score:4, Insightful)
What I don't get is: even when you don't have paid maternity/paternity leave (which is your society's fault), why can't you as the man take (20-40%) of the time staying at home (before kindergarden), and then your wife takes the rest? I mean, she has after all carried the baby and given birth to it, so surely she deserves more than 50%? Is your employer really going to deny you a total of (1-3)x3 months of unpaid leave, when seen against your entire working life of 50+ years and all the benefits that come from a closer connection to your children?
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In all the attempts to validate domestic partnerships legally the last gaps have been closed. There really is no valid reason to have a legal co
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It seems you can't say anything on a subject like this without being accused of sexism at some point. So I thought I'd immunize myself by saying it first!
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Forever? Then you were damn stupid to move to or get married in Colorado. Spousal support isn't forever in most jurisdictions.
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You are assuming that children and fertility are a women-only issue. Actually most men seem to want children and all of them need children to create the next generation and keep society viable. Expecting women to take the entire burden is unfair.
It is a hard problem to solve. Part of it is having better child care so women can attend events or carry on working. Part of it is accepting women taking a break in their careers with no stigma attached, and having no issue with them being older by the time they re
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You are assuming that children and fertility are a women-only issue. Actually most men seem to want children and all of them need children to create the next generation and keep society viable. Expecting women to take the entire burden is unfair.
I agree with the rest of your post, but saying that women are taking on the entire burden of childcare is dead wrong. That is unfortunately the case in most families where both parents work full time, but when a mother decides to put her career on hold to raise children both the man and woman suffer financially. The man is the required to be the sole breadwinner, which increases stress and often hurts career advancement because risks are harder to take. Both sides are risking their financial well being if a
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So, latch-key kids is your vision for a better society?
Latch-key kids are kids who don't have after-school child care and thus use their "latch keys" to get into the house where no parent is home.
Apparently, a society of children raised by professional child raisers, kind of like 10 hour a day school from age 1 through 18, is the better society the OP envisions. Funded, of course, by the taxpayer. Who needs parental or emotional attachments when the government is ready, willing and able to provide for all needs?
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In many British families in at least the last couple of hundred years, the upper classes farmed out their kids to governesses or boarding schools. So it's not necessarily funded by the taxpayer.
Your anti-tax sensitivity may be set too low.
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In many British families in at least the last couple of hundred years, the upper classes farmed out their kids to governesses or boarding schools. So it's not necessarily funded by the taxpayer.
Those upper class British families were not crying for "better child care". Better child care is available for those who can pay for it. The complaint about needing "better child care" includes an implicit "that I don't have to pay a lot, if anything, for", and that means "taxpayer funded." Or, when someone is corporation bashing, the company needs to provide it free, which means the cost is passed on to the shareholders. In both cases, "other people paying to raise my children so I don't have to."
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Sounds like a totally appropriate use of taxpayer money.
After the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, mothers on welfare were required to go to work. A lot of mothers preferred to stay home with their kids, but they couldn't do that any more. The work programs usually paid less than they had been getting in the old welfare programs, and most mothers left the program to find free-market work, which didn't give them enough to survive, according to Kathryn Eden, who actuall
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Don't worry, to support the increased tax burden, both of the parents can go out to work.
Re:How does it compare? (Score:4, Interesting)
You tell Universities that they will lose x% of their funding until y% of their Biology faculty consists of female professors with 2.1 children, and you'll see just how quickly those biological difference simply melt away.
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We'll need to find a good way to preserve that tenth of a child though.
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"It's just a ratio."
"Poor Horatio!"
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And of course setting blind quotas has never resulted in unintended, unwanted, and generally counterproductive consequences.
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Considering all invited speakers (including declined invitations), 23% were women. This was lower than the baseline sex ratios of early-mid career stage scientists, but was similar to senior scientists and authors that have published in high-impact journals.
Speakers are invited to give a talk if they are prominent in their field, i.e., senior and/or published in high impact journals. What about the rest of the participants?
it is encouraging that the overall sex ratio of scientists presenting their work at the 2011 ESEB congress was nearly equal. Moreover, there was no strong deviation from this overall sex ratio compared to presenters of both poster categories and regular talks.
Perhaps a solution would be for organizations that promote women in science through grants and awards to increase the portions set aside for travel expenses?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is probably one of the few places where the correlation is not causation meme isn't total moonbat idiocy.
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Almost nothing in this comment makes any sense. What is a 'wider distribution'? You mean men are more versatile than women, more random, more prone to doing things, what?
Anytime I hear the phrase 'men are' or 'women are' I know the stupid isn't far behind, because making generalisations about the personalities and proclivities of three and a half billion people from an enormous variety of different backgrounds, cultures, and educational levels is not possible.
Re:Not too shocking. (Score:4, Informative)
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It's nonsense, like the claim that there is more variance among Caucasians than black Africans or Orientals, explaining why most modern geniuses are white. It's all down to circumstance, not genetics or gender.
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It's fairly obvious, actually. Most traits with a gender component show a wider variance in men than women because men have only one X chromosome, while women have 2, which end up 'averaging' (broadly). This is advantageous genetically as well - if all males were the same, there would be little to distinguish them for sexual competition reasons.
Oh, and since you asked and we're talking about intelligence, source:
Re:Not too shocking. (Score:4, Insightful)
What is a 'wider distribution'? You mean men are more versatile than women, more random, more prone to doing things, what?
I've heard this theory elaborated before (by a female physicist btw). Supposedly, if you look at physical things like height or weight distributions, you'll find much more variance amongst male human beings than you will with females. In other words, if you found the 100 people in the world with the highest BMI and the lowest BMI, a preponderance of both groups will be men.
The theory is, if you could apply the same measurements to more subjective things like "intelligence", you would find the same things: both the 100 (or 1000 or whatever) dumbest and the 100 smartest people in the world will be mostly men.
I'll go on record as saying I'm not sure I buy this logic at all, but perhaps that's just because I'm male and I heard it from a female first. ;-)
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This has been studied with IQ as well - the centers of the curves are the same for men and women (same average IQ) but the peak is higher for women, and the tail is longer for men. And yes, everyone has already made that joke - and that one too.
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Women on the other hand, are getting pregnant no matter what, unless they very ugly or genetically unable.
Tell that to any number of childless couples, I'm sure the'll love hearing your philosophy (end sarcasm). Not to mention that the problem may lay on the male side, women without children aren't necessarily childless because of something wrong with *them*.
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Do you know why our dicks have a mushroom head? That shape works to pump out competing sperm.
Yes, and a cat's penis is hook shaped in case any fish swam up the female cat's vagina.
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That is, my point is that men, in general, tend to have a larger diversity - a wider distribution - than women do, in almost any area of skill.
This is impossible to parse. I am guessing you mean a wider distribution of skill level in any area of skill? As in women are more clustered around certain norms of achievement and men tend to be more divergent in both good and bad ways?
I feel like I've heard that's true for some areas (e.g. math), but I'd be very hesitant to draw that kind of across-the-board statement without massive amounts of data. Are you sure men aren't just more bombastic, both when idiots and when geniuses, so it's more obvious t
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I think men are raised to take more risks, so this leads to a lot more wild successes as well as wild failures.
Not nearly as many women use the phrase: "Hold my beer and watch this."
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I feel like I've heard that's true for some areas (e.g. math), but I'd be very hesitant to draw that kind of across-the-board statement without massive amounts of data.
Well, most of this theory comes out of psychological research [wikipedia.org], particularly IQ tests and other general intelligence tests.
It isn't so much that we have across-the-board data for lots of fields/skills/areas, as much as we have a number of studies on supposed tests of "general intelligence," which show a wider variance for men compared to women.
If you believe in the assumption that IQ tests are actually relevant to performance in a wider variety of areas, then it would seem reasonable to conclude that suc
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Men may, in general, *express* a larger diversity. The question of whether this is because of grater actually diversity in men, greater suppression of non-conforming behavior in women, or something else is the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.
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That is why most criminals are men, for example.
maybe women are just congenitally sneakier
Misleading title (Score:5, Insightful)
However it seems like all they did is "analyze" (read: count) the number of male and female speakers and found that there were less female speakers. From this they say women are "underrepresented". Hardly a sound conclusion. What if 20% of all scientists are women, and 80% are men? Then a fair (neither over- nor under-) representation would be 20% female speakers and 80% male speakers. Then you'd have to go see the reasons why there are less women scientists than male scientists, which can be many. The pregnancy thing mentioned in the article is likely a big one, at least.
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Even in comparison to the numbers of women and men among world class scientists – from the world top ranked institutions for life sciences, and authors in the top-tier journals Nature and Science - women were still underrepresented among invited speakers."
It's right there in the freaking summary...
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This got me to actually looking through the paper [wiley.com]. I concluded that: I wish they would make the raw data available. It would be easier to make sense of than long sentences with numbers strewn in. But yes it seems they accounted for this.
Reading the paper, it seems that this underrepresentation was only out of the invited speakers,
Re:Misleading title (Score:4, Insightful)
If you see fewer women than men presenting at conferences, there could be many reasons for that. For example, is the ratio of women to men presenting at top conferences different from the ratio of women to men receiving doctoral degrees from top universities?
There could be filtering mechanisms in place at many stages in an academic career that favor one gender over another. In chronological order: admission to undergraduate degree program, graduation from undergraduate programs, admission to graduate degree program, awarding of research funding to graduate students, primary authorship of papers, acceptance of papers, presentation of papers, awarding of graduate degrees, postdoctoral fellowships, awarding of research grants, tenure-track faculty appointments, awarding of tenure, etc., etc.
So these authors picked one of those stages out of the approximate middle of the professional chain I just outlined and found the number of women is less than the number of men. I could have guessed that. The researchers say only "there are many potential contributing factors," which is not much of a causal explanation.
I am beginning to understand why some men get a bit defensive when headlines like this appear. It sounds like more than a hint of accusation, yet without enough evidence to actually accuse anyone with. So let's not forget how frustrating the lack of causal explanation can be to men. (Disclaimer: I am a man.)
If you're actually interested in the causes and effects of gender imbalance in academe, I would recommend the MIT Gender Equity Project [mit.edu]. Its methodology was more comprehensive than just counting Y chromosomes in one sub-field.
I don't really blame the biologists who did this study for failing to pin down the root cause of the gender imbalance they saw. If the root cause were easy to find, academics would either have fixed it (if inequity exists) or stopped caring (if the reason is simply fewer girls than boys want to study science). Even the MIT study concluded this is a complex issue.
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There was a study in Science of sex discrimination in Berkeley, in which researchers found that the graduate departments overall discriminated against admitting women. Then they refined the study to find out which specific departments were discriminating more -- and none of them were.
It turned out to be a now-classic example of Simpson's paradox in statistics. The engineering departments had specific requirements, engineering graduates knew whether they met those requirements, only a few students met them,
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There was a study in Science of sex discrimination in Berkeley, in which researchers found that the graduate departments overall discriminated against admitting women. Then they refined the study to find out which specific departments were discriminating more -- and none of them were. It turned out to be a now-classic example of Simpson's paradox in statistics.
No, sounds like the now typical politically correct use of simple statistics to prove whatever you want. If "agency X" doesn't have equal numbers of male and female Y, then agency X is discriminating against women. It doesn't matter why the numbers aren't the same. (And you can include cases when the numbers of men and women are a ratio dependent upon the percentages in the total.)
This is a typical Title 9 analysis. If School A has 40% female attendance, then if athletics doesn't have 40% participation by
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No, you got it exactly backwards. Read the article.
http://www.unc.edu/~nielsen/soci708/cdocs/Berkeley_admissions_bias.pdf [unc.edu]
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/187/4175/398.abstract [sciencemag.org]
Science 7 February 1975:
Vol. 187 no. 4175 pp. 398-404
DOI: 10.1126/science.187.4175.398
Sex Bias in Graduate Admissions: Data from Berkeley
P. J. Bickel1,
E. A. Hammel1,
J. W. O'Connell1
Abstract
Examination of aggregate data o
Age-old dilemma (Score:5, Funny)
If only female scientists would tell us their findings instead of expecting us to read their minds.
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I for one, welcome (Score:2)
the smart women who aren't getting the credit they deserve!
What? You thought this was an overlord joke?
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I for one, welcome our overladies.
WHY!?!?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Another human being with biology compatible for reproduction.
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Probably a new RAID controller I suspect.
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Why is everyone and everything focusing on GENDER?! Gender makes NO DIFFERENCE!!! Even color or race make no difference!! STUPIDITY comes in all colors and genders!!!
Wealth.
Wealthy, secure people deliberately seek sources of anxiety and conflict. A human is denied sufficient angst it will create more. There are no invaders or starvation or plagues or inquisitions to deal with among the Eloi of the west; actual problems are basically solved, so we invent fake problems to fill the void.
MLK said it best... (Score:2)
Sick of this crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Look. As long as there is nothing in a person's way (and this is already the case by law) these kinds of studies need to be abandoned. The fact is, there are FAR fewer female garbage truck drivers than male. Also, far fewer female auto mechanics. Are they being disciminated against there too? Or is it more likely they don't have an interest. And if it is lack of interest, look to that research. The more we understand our differences, the better off we will be.
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Also, far fewer female auto mechanics. Are they being disciminated against there too?
Just an anecdote, but...
When I was in college I did a co-op at an automotive company. One of the other co-ops was talking about an auto repair shop (I think he worked there for a while?), and how its quality started dropping. He concluded the story with "...and then they put a woman in the shop!", clearly implying that this was the last straw. This was met with general laughter and agreement from the other co-ops.
Just because it's not broadcast from the rooftops doesn't mean it isn't there. A lot of this st
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It's not always lack of interest. Maybe the lack of interest is a part of the problem but it's not the whole of the problem. And if lack of interest is the problem then maybe that should be fixed as well.
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The fact is, there are FAR fewer female garbage truck drivers than male. Also, far fewer female auto mechanics. Are they being disciminated against there too?
Yes. However, I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say it is discrimination, that implies deliberate bias. Society, circumstance, history and a whole number of factors are at work.
Or is it more likely they don't have an interest.
I doubt many men have much interest in being garbage truck drivers. I see no reason why men would find that job more desirable than women.
As for being a car mechanic, it is true that cars, being somewhat powerful machines, are of more interest to men because of natural masculinity. Being a car mechanic has little to do with that thoug
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I wonder what Miss Utah... (Score:2)
The researchers analyzed the genders? (Score:2)
Sexual harassment rules complicate things (Score:5, Interesting)
With a high-stakes career in academics, where one accusation could cause years of grief, the rule is that you never do anything with any university-connected female that could ever be misinterpreted as sexual.
You do not ask females to go out to dinner to discuss their research. You do not invite (pester) females to visit your university, repeatedly. You do not discuss an abstruse academic point in a bar until late. You do not go to the golf course with a female co-worker (married or unmarried). You do nothing that could ever be misinterpreted, which often means you do nothing at all. This applies even if you are at a conference where the only opportunity to discuss things is late at night, or over dinner, or in a hotel room, or in a bar.
On the other hand, with a male colleague, you find a common social activity and bond.
Over the course of 15 years, subtle effects like this make a huge difference in the quality of social relationships formed between researchers in a field. Good social relationships open the doors that make good professor's famous.
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That's actually a good point. Guys do have to be especially careful when interacting with women in the workplace or in any working relationship. I can see it being difficult to be as persistent with a woman, or as social, as with guys.
At work, I've had the guys over several times to play guitars and drums together (one bass (plays drums too), one drummer, and three guitarists (us three are novices at guitar all taking lessons)). I had convinced a woman in our department to take guitar lessons after I'd star
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You do not discuss an abstruse academic point in a bar until late.
. . . if you do . . . you wake up the next morning as a permanent guest at the Ecuadorean Embassy!
On the other hand, with a male colleague, you find a common social activity and bond.
Yes, those female academics tend to talk on endlessly, fawning over ponies, shoes and Justin Bieber . . .
Good social relationships open the doors that make good professor's famous.
So male academics form "Old Boys' Networks". Actually, I would expect females academics to do the same, and form "Old Girls' Networks". That should even things out again.
But then again, just look at the Slashdot community. We don't accept or invite posts from female biologists either . . .
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Given the numbers from Kinsey's research, how are you so sure of the motives of the guys that want to hang out with you late at the bar to 'talk shop'?
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Good social relationships open the doors that make good professor's famous.
The good professor's famous what?
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Obviously (Score:2)
This research was done by a man otherwise we would not be hearing about it.
It's Complicated (Score:2)
I run an international conference in a relatively small field, that is, one with only a few thousand researchers all told. We do pretty well at gender balance in our invited speakers, but it is MUCH HARDER to invite qualified female speakers than male ones.
Why?
Because there are fewer of them, so they are in higher demand, since all of the conference organizers want them to speak. Our conference typically has about a 90% acceptance rate for our invitations, for male speakers. For female speakers, it's clo
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The whole idea of "underrepresentation" needs to go. Equal opportunity is all that's needed. Mandating equal genders at "prestigious" positions is retarding. Should we mandate 50% male and female interior decorators? What about Coal Miners? Sorry, you wanted to be an interior decorator, but we need more women coal miners. Ugh, no. Your international conference is sexist because it vastly over represents females instead of portraying a percentage of male vs females corresponding to the percentages ac
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This is his third one this week. Is he trying to impress someone?
Whoever it is, maybe she'll hook up with her Womens' Studies professor, and Soulskill can get on with his life.
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I saw Jennifer at the mall and she was not with a dentist.
Did look like a little drilling had been going on though.
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I saw Jennifer at the mall and she was not with a dentist. Did look like a little drilling had been going on though.
"Drilling" is fun for the first few times, but at the end of the day, it's just boring.
Re:Work is not the most important thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the effort to equally represent women in science usually ends up devaluing the other, more important work that they do... raising a good family. Society has a greater need for mothers than scientists.
Insofar as your meaning is that "society has a greater need for mothers [and fathers] than scientists", I agree. A single income, two parent home is a better ideal than the whole dual income, farm-the-kid-out-to-daycare situation. I personally don't care if it's a housewife or house husband -- nobody cares about your own kids as much as you do -- or as much as you can if you try.
I wonder if part of the anger that your post seems to have triggered among mods is that you specifically said that children need mothers. It seems to be a point of strictly enforced dogma in politically correct discourse these days to say that children doesn't really need women in their lives (see the debate surrounding gay marriage). If you say that it's best for a child to have female mother, then you are generally considered a terrible person. At least that's what I've seen. (I'm a terrible person, by the way.)
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Unfortunately, the effort to equally represent women in science usually ends up devaluing the other, more important work that they do... raising a good family. Society has a greater need for mothers than scientists.
I wonder if part of the anger that your post seems to have triggered among mods is that you specifically said that children need mothers. It seems to be a point of strictly enforced dogma in politically correct discourse these days to say that children doesn't really need women in their lives (see the debate surrounding gay marriage). If you say that it's best for a child to have female mother, then you are generally considered a terrible person. At least that's what I've seen.
I don't think that's quite it. The original quote sounds very conservative (as in "women should be at home raising the kids, not doing science [with the justification that 'raising kids is important']").
I think a reader can choose to read that message into the original quote. I personally don't read it that way.
I'll risk losing a little karma by entering this debate, but what I see is mostly a statement of fact: as a society, we do actually need parents to raise children even more than we need research scientists. If we do not raise more children, society will cease to exist. That's a basic statement of fact.
The difficulty is in the assertion that we might actually need women more than men in the pa
Re: (Score:3)
Insofar as your meaning is that "society has a greater need for mothers [and fathers] than scientists", I agree. A single income, two parent home is a better ideal than the whole dual income, farm-the-kid-out-to-daycare situation. I personally don't care if it's a housewife or house husband -- nobody cares about your own kids as much as you do -- or as much as you can if you try.
I've become convinced that the ideal solution is the single-income, two parent home where both parents work part time. Sadly, there's simply no acceptance of that in professional work at all.
I think working full time for the first 10 years or so of your career (to master your trade) and then part time thereafter would be a much better model for society (and for business - two professionals who work 25 hours a week are usually far more productive than one working 50).