« The Appeasement Way | Main | 2013 » Sexism in Science and Engineering19 May 2008 09:04 am
Study finds pervasive sexism in the fields of science, engineering, and technology. This goes to show, of course, that women don't succeed in the hard sciences due to their lack of innate aptitude for putting up with discrimination and harassment. Or something like that. Photo by Flickr user SF Treasure Hunts used under a Creative Commons license Comments (57)
gregor makes a decent point. The sexism is root in class-based defensiveness and economic insecurity: the job market is so poor that women are seen as competitors for the limited number of long-term jobs which already have an established workforce frequently forced into early retirement. I admit that I just skimmed the NYT article, but I didn't see the case of doctors mentioned. Lots of people do well as doctors, and the entry of women into the field isn't seen as competition that will hurt the already-established professionals. By contrast, an established group of poorly paid postdoctoral fellows desperate for a faculty position regard women as just one more group to blame for their problems (conveniently distracting them from the real problems in their field). That's not even getting started on the social insularity which breeds a lack of professional conduct. 
Speaking of doctors, my recently graduated M.D. class was 65% women. That's just about in line with the national statistics of 60/40 women/men ratio of medical students.
There's pretty good evidence that women have generally turned to fields in which success is measured in the most standardized ways possible, because while these standardized evaluations are still biased, they are significantly less biased against women than the evaluation and advancement criteria in most fields. Medicine in particular - and I mean "medicine" in the technical sense, excluding surgical fields - has been practically overrun with competent women, they make up easily 60-70% of American residents.
To add to the comment above, even surgical fields are becoming increasingly female. 40% of the orthopedic residents at my school are female - a field that has been traditionally all male. General surgery has similar demographics.
To clarify, my point is that medicine is a weird field which is pretty easily differentiable from most of the SET fields described in the article. The success of women in medicine stands as a contrast to the state of SET fields, not a counterargument against the existence of mass discrimination in SET.
My ex is about to get a Doctorate in Physics, and she's not only female but a gorgeous blond with large breasts.
Divguy: "There's pretty good evidence that women have generally turned to fields in which success is measured in the most standardized ways possible" Could you cite more evidence? Stephen Pinker says the data says the exact opposite: "THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE PINKER VS. SPELKE" excerpt:
I object to the notion that jobs with demanding hours are unfriendly in a gender-specific way. A single father would be no less screwed in one of these jobs than a single mom. And if one member of a married couple has crazy hours, then it's up to the both of them to determine who does what wrt child-rearing.
So to make the point women have enormous difficulties breaking thru the bias to make a career in SET, they publish an article in the Fashion and Style section. Ms. Engineer (who's looking hard for another field)
I think the general jist of the article may be true, but it is sloppy reporting. The article mis-quotes the former Harvard president's statement about women in science. It also doesn't seem to offer much proof other than anecdotes. It is possible to believe after reading the article that women leave science jobs simply because they want to.
I'd totally bang that Asian broad.
scottynx, actually, the point being made that women *within the sciences* will go into the fields where the criteria of success are measured the most objectively. eg, women in engineering will frequently choose well-defined high-paying fields like Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, because they're the safest career paths. Women in the sciences will choose to go into medicine, because there are the fewest professional risks involved in getting screwed over due to sexism or subjective criteria. Clearly this does not prove true across fields, but *within fields*, there's certainly some anecdotal evidence in its favor.
The problem with Pinker's analysis is that it retroactively labels professions based on a new found level of "softness." 50 years ago, no one would dare put medicine in the category of "helpling professions." Similarly, go back 100 years and look at the faculty of your university English department. I think what we are seeing is a gradual transition - starting with the fields that were most easily accessible to women - towards a female equality/overrepresentation. They "picked" the "soft" fields initially based not on the difficulty of the subject matter, but because of the lack of bias in those particular fields. It was much easier for a turn of the 20th Century female to become an author - the amount of equipment needed was only minor, the education required could be mastered much by self study, and there was always the opportunity to get a "foot in the door" by publishing initially under a male pseudonym. Contrast that with trying to break into physics of engineering at the same time - which required expensive labs and high specific, directed, education, and interviewing face to face - and suddenly that field becomes more difficult. What has happened since then is that we saw a slow trickle of women move into fields - the arts, the humanities, the soft sciences, now the biologic sciences until somewhere around the 70s/80s we reached a critical mass and those fields have exploded with women. It's only a matter of time before the trickle of women in the "hard" scienes reaches a similar flood state.
First I am surprised at Matt's uncritical reporting of this "study." It explicitly says this was concieved in response to Summer's remarks. That doesn't sound like anyone set out to study anything. They set out to validate their preconcieved notions. Second as a professor in the hard sciences (math and physics) at an elite institution I believe the article missed out on one of the most striking aspects of the situation in this corner (I cannot comment on the commercial or engineering or biology sectors). There is a significant REVERSE discrimination. A case in point. This year two people I've mentored whose PhDs were at the same time were on the assistant professor market. I regarded them as roughly comparable with research accomplishments that were roughly comparable. Yet one had a dozen job offers while the other had exactly one. Clearly in a number of places they were being considered against each other. What is the difference - the one with the dozen offers is a woman. I asked a person at one place how they made the decision and was told that on paper they looked hard to distinguish but the decision was easy: "Our administration is so anxious to increase the number of women faculty in the hard sciences, they give us extra slots to hire women." By the way, one should not think I'm opposed to this reverse discrimination - I think diversity is very important if only to provide our female students with existence theorems that a woman can make it. So the article was very disappointing. About the only thing that rang true is that at least at the better rungs of academia, especially for younger researchers, this is not a 40 hour per week job and given the way society is still structured, it is hard for women to cope with if they also have a family.
The Ideas section in the Boston Globe had an article this past weekend on this issue, and while mentioning that research the author also talked about how individual's choices, self-selection basically, (potentially impacted by discrimination but not necessarily) also has a role in leading to the disproportionately male-ness of engineering/science.
GtheK, The question on many of the soft sciences is whether women took over or did men flee? If you look at things like social work, the pay is low and the job market is competitive. No only are there few men in the field but the number of white females in the field is decreasing. What is left implied in many of the comments and in the article is that there are few women. What they really men is that there are few white women. There are a large number of Asian women in the biological sciences to the point that in many labs, Chinese is the de facto language of business instead of Chinese.
Math is hard. Let's go shopping.
I think the point of the article that everybody is missing is that women don't stay in SET... they get into these fields fine, but then decide to do other things in their late 30's and early 40's. Objective criteria doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. There appears to be an exodus of talented and capable women from these fields at least partially attributable to work environment. The lab I work in has had a pretty low success rate with female postdocs and research assistants... and while I'd like to think there isn't rampart sexism and macho culture here, it does seem to be something that needs a bit more attention paid to it.
1) There may be an element of self-selection here. Women have a biological clock ticking and they , in my opinion, like to work in areas where there's opportunities to meet attractive husbands. 2) A bunch of cubicles with young engineers resembles the hog corrals in the Chicago stockyards. Actually, the repulsion understandably starts in college. I say that as someone who recently helped his engineering son move his belongings home for the summer from college. To say his dorm room resembled a pig sty would insult the pigs. 3) The work attracts introverted loners who are independent. They object to wearing a tie and other standards of polite society. Some of them object to bathing more than once a week.
From the article: is filled with tales of sexual harassment (63 percent of women say they experienced harassment on the job) 'Filled with tales' does not inspire confidence in the rigor of this study. As for the 'experience harassment' stat, it does suggest significant harassment (though if 63% of women experienced harassment *at some point in their careers* that doesn't necessarily represent and ongoing epidemic). and dismissive attitudes of male colleagues (53 percent said in order to succeed in their careers they had to “act like a man”) Confusion. 53% of the male colleagues said this? That's the grammatical interpretation, but I would assume based on the kind of stats you would have in such a study that 53% of the respondents to the study indicated that they had been told this. and a lack of mentors (51 percent of engineers say they lack one) 51% of engineers, or 51% of *female* engineers?? and hours that suit men with wives at home but not working mothers (41 percent of technology workers says they need to be available “24/7”). This is playing into the hands of the enemy. 'The hours suit men with wives at home, but not working mothers' is easily twisted into 'the job is too demanding for a woman who might have kids, since she won't be able to put in enough hours'. If you want to claim this as evidence that society is structured in a sexist way, fine; but don't claim that IT jobs are inherently sexist becuase they demand unusual hours or availability. I'm not optimistic that this study will show much that's interesting. It's one thing to show that sexism still exists, and collect anecdotes about what people have experienced; it's quite another to show that sexism is responsible for damaging careers or holding women back.
Shorter Don Williams: The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
I love science women. Smart, motivated, and attractive!
1) There are women who are more than capable of working in SET. Even 25 years ago, I knew women in high corporate engineering positions (system architects, responsible for overseeing the design and creation of $Billion dollar systems.) 2) One of the top US students in math AND physics is Sherry Gong, who graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 2007. She was one of only a few students on the US Team for the International Math Olympiad. She was ALSO selected for the US team for the International PHYSICS Olympiad. 3) Larry Summers' Harvard University was DAMM glad to recruit Sherry.
The Study was done by the Center for Work-Life Policy. FROM: http://www.worklifepolicy.org/index.php/pageID/23 SYLVIA ANN HEWLETT is an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy where she directs the “Hidden Brain Drain”—a task force of 35 global companies committed to fully realize female and minority talent over the lifespan. She also heads up the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University..." Guess I tend to be more skeptical than Matt of "studies" that are done by advocacy groups that have a vested interest in reaching certain conclusions.
I find this conclusion to be at odds with the reality that I see every day. I can say that the engineering fields are about as neutral as any industry out there and probably even more so. This is an industry that is today dominated by Chinese and Indians not because they planned it that way, but because these fields only demand that you bring your brain and they responded accordingly. I have seen companies, in the worst form of affirmative action, hire any woman that can spell the technical words correctly because they fear being called sexist or worse. I have also seen woman excel to positions on an equal footing with the men around them, based on the same sort of hard work that was demanded of their colleagues. The numbers may look bad, but I can say, as I have said to my daughter who has taken up the challenge, just bring your brain and the rest will be easy. On the other hand .. lazy brains need not apply.
1) On the other hand, there are also women who are NOT suited for SET. Engineering and Science has demanding standards. When it comes to solving an engineering problem, one person who knows what they are doing is worth 10 people sitting around and chatting about how to approach the problem. A solution is right or it is wrong --group consensus doesn't mean shit. 2) Someone whose work mode is handwaving bullshit that collapses under rigorous analysis is better suited to go into management -- or to work as a reporter for the NY Times. 3) Look at the NY Times reporter --Lisa Belkins -- who wrote the article cited by Matthew. She cut and pasted some cherry-picked evidence and then made a glib, lazy, shallow narrative. Would you want someone like that computing force vectors and designing a bridge that goes over San Francisco Bay? A bridge which must not collapse during an earthquake? 4) The last female NY Times reporter that addressed issues of science and technology was Judith Miller. So how did that turn out?
We all know the radical haters of gender within the academy takes the form of over the top feminism….Just ask Larry Summers.
Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? By Christina Hoff Sommers From the March/April 2008 Issue of America As you would suspect they have neither science empirical backing nor common sense to support their claims. Nevertheless its full steam ahead to “fix” the problem.
Besides the interesting data on the “controversy” at hand - This article reveals just how twisted the agenda of gender egalitarianism really is. They treat sex differences like a disease that need be eliminated. If things are this bad when discussing the hard sciences imagine how much more difficult it is in the soft sciences to discuss the need to improve our marriage culture and provide children with their Mothers & Fathers. To achieve a gender-fair society, Valian advocates a concerted attack on conventional gender schemas. This includes altering the way we raise our children. Consider the custom of encouraging girls to play with dolls. Such early socialization, she says, creates an association between being female and being nurturing. Valian concludes, “Egalitarian parents can bring up their children so that both boys and girls play with dolls and trucks.... From the standpoint of equality, nothing is more important. Note how strident the ideology...
By the way, graduating engineering students (BS-level) are starting now at $50,000 and above this year. I've heard of a few above $100,000 in selected fields. Not too bad starting in the top 10% of wage earners. Bring your brain
We all know the radical haters of gender within the academy takes the form of over the top feminism….Just ask Larry Summers.
Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? By Christina Hoff Sommers From the March/April 2008 Issue of America As you would suspect they have neither science empirical backing nor common sense to support their claims. Nevertheless its full steam ahead to “fix” the problem.
Besides the interesting data on the “controversy” at hand - This article reveals just how twisted the agenda of gender egalitarianism really is. They treat sex differences like a disease that need be eliminated. If things are this bad when discussing the hard sciences imagine how much more difficult it is in the soft sciences to discuss the need to improve our marriage culture and provide children with their Mothers & Fathers. To achieve a gender-fair society, Valian advocates a concerted attack on conventional gender schemas. This includes altering the way we raise our children. Consider the custom of encouraging girls to play with dolls. Such early socialization, she says, creates an association between being female and being nurturing. Valian concludes, “Egalitarian parents can bring up their children so that both boys and girls play with dolls and trucks.... From the standpoint of equality, nothing is more important. Note how strident the ideology...
This is an industry that is today dominated by Chinese and Indians not because they planned it that way, but because these fields only demand that you bring your brain and they responded accordingly. Actually, it's dominated by Chinese and Indians because while engineering has a poor risk/reward retrun for Americans, the lifetime earnings of being an engineer in America so vastly exceed what they would be in China and India that the choice to come to the USA to do that work is pretty easy, despite the drawbacks. If it's a choice between being an engineer in China/India or being an engineer in the US, one would choose being an engineer in the US in a split second. If the choice is being an engineer in the US or choosing a profession in the US requiring a similar amount of difficulty, training, and hard work, those other careers look like better deals.
On the other hand, the one thing worst than writing an article like Lisa Belkins' is CITING questionable articles --thereby giving them a stamp of approval. I thought only males like Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and the guy at Little Green Footballs did stuff like that.
The cross section of most engineering companies look just like engineering grad schools. Maybe they should look there for the answer.
And to add what Neo said, my public high school in DC suburbs in '91 had 1 woman (out of fourteen students) enrolled in the AP Calculus BC class and zero women (out of seven) enrolled in the AP Physics class. Have these trends changed in the last two decades?
To add another anecdote, my freshman intro to engineering course at Va Tech in fall '91 had two women out of about thirty people. Has this trend changed?
Tyro gets it right. From the vantage point of someone who grows up in this country, Math and science and engineering are not as rewarding as many other professions that kids have the choice of entering, and the financial rewards for an average worker in these fields are not commensurate with the effort that is required to succeed in these areas. If you can make so much money uploading images from Flickr to a blog, why bother studying the intricacies of chaotic behavior of quarks in fluctuating electromagnetic fields?
Ah, the article answers my question. Still only about 20% of engineering grads are women.
Now that I've RTFA: And that just might be a figure that even the unshowered geek in the cubicle can respect. Gotta love how an article about 'diversity' concludes with a insulting stereotype.
I could write a very long article on women and SET (also called STEM, M for mathematics) that is much more positive than the one you linked to, that is based on data and personal experience, but I have not time for that. I have to make serious progress on my grant before running off to pick up my kid at daycare and going home to cook dinner. Many of the posters here have raised good points. But I must say, Matthew, that I am slightly disappointed that you linked to this piece, which is a rather terrible article, based on, as far as I can tell here, a poorly conducted study with an agenda, and then used it to take a swipe at someone for something that that person did not actually say. In general I find the press on women and STEM to be rather appalling, overwhelming anecdote-based, and dismissive of the idea that a. personal preferences have anything to do with career choice b. Some of the stories about bad behavior from colleagues have more to do with colleagues who are assholes with poor social skills rather than overtly sexists c. Men with serious family responsibilities, including having a spouse with a demanding career, face many of the same issues and d. Men with certain kinds of personalities face many of the same kinds of issues and finally e. Poorly written articles based on poorly conducted studies that inspire heavy-handed government funded initiatives for aging boomer women to see sexisms in every single human interaction and then inject the pathology into the next generation ARE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. I'll tell you, I'm a reasonably successful academic scientist and sometimes I think this job is horribly unsatisfying and a waste of time in a world that has real problems that we are not addressing, and guess what-I started thinking like this when I was, yes, wait for it.....35!!! And I am not alone in this.
There's pretty good evidence that women have generally turned to fields in which success is measured in the most standardized ways possible, because while these standardized evaluations are still biased, they are significantly less biased against women than the evaluation and advancement criteria in most fields. This is something I've long believed. DivGuy, do you have any cites/sources on this?
Re Neo's comment "By the way, graduating engineering students (BS-level) are starting now at $50,000 and above this year. I've heard of a few above $100,000 in selected fields. Not too bad starting in the top 10% of wage earners." What Neo doesn't say is that 30 years later, many of those engineering students who STAY in engineering will only be making around $55,000. Because why give a raise/promotion to a guy whose technical knowledge is 30 years out of date if you can hire a cheap young guy just fresh out of school? Especially cheap young guys from India or China would will work for the equivalent of a bag of rice? Why do women leave SET in their thirties? Because they can.
You know, having listened to some of Pinker's lectures on his books, he seems to have good insights that make you think, but with the quote here, I can easily see why some people are so hostile to him. Women do not choose things like teaching and nursing because they are "helping professions." Women are encouraged to go into teaching and nursing because it provides a low-risk way to get a decent income, stability, a job in constant demand (even if you leave the field and decide to return later on), and, until the past few decades, was the closest a woman could get to being regarded as a "professional." When looking at STE-related jobs, we should ask ourselves if jobs with a similar level of difficulty and preparation have those same features. My guess is no and that you would see more women with STE backgrounds gravitating to medicine or patent law than men with similar academic strengths/backgrounds.
Just a note on that photo. I saw those guys at the treasure hunt two years ago. Quite clever, during the year of the pig they were all scientists...the group named itself Niels Bohrs. Pretty funny stuff.
This article makes the very surprising claim that women start leaving this field in their 30s. Before that things are pretty equal. That does not match my experience at all, so I am wondering what exactly those studies were measuring. I'd agree that their is a lot of systematic bias discouraging women from entering these fields, but I would not have thought an unusually sexist workplace was the biggest problem. (In my experience a sales workforce is far more likely to be filled with sexist pigs than an engineering one). And if you're problem is that the guy who stays in his cubicle working for a week is the hero... I don't know what to say. It's a dumb culture, but it's not a sexist one, its just one that values hard work.
It only costs $295: summary:
Forty-one percent of highly qualified scientists, engineers, and technologists on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders are female. But more than half (52%) drop out. Why? To better understand the scope and shape of female talent, the Athena Factor research project studied the career trajectories of women with SET credentials in the private sector. It found 5 powerful "antigens" in corporate cultures. Women in SET are marginalized by hostile macho cultures. Being the sole woman on a team or at a site can create isolation. Many women report mysterious career paths: fully 40% feel stalled. Systems of risk and reward in SET cultures can disadvantage women, who tend to be risk averse. Finally, SET jobs include extreme work pressures: they are unusually time intensive. Moreover, female attrition rates spike 10 years into a career. Women experience a perfect storm in their mid- to late thirties: They hit serious career hurdles precisely when family pressures intensify. Companies that step in with targeted support before this "fight or flight moment" may be able to lower the female attrition rate significantly. This study features 13 company initiatives that address this female brain drain. Some, for example, are designed to break down female isolation; others create on-ramps for women who want to return to work. These initiatives are likely to be "game changers": They will allow many more women to stay on track in SET careers.
Still only about 20% of engineering grads are women. But this is apparently all due to self-selection and there's no such thing as sexism. All the anecdotes here say so! lemuel pitkin, I haven't seen it in the sciences (haven't looked either), but women started getting into orchestras (in pretty significant numbers) when the auditions started happening behind a screen and their gender was hidden.
I am a female who just finished a mathematics master's degree at a top university. Some observations:
Personally, I think that women "de-select" themselves out of engineering based on the idea that getting a college degree allows you to get a "clean" job. The idea of going through college and then having to go out to probe an oil hole, take readings on a chemical plant distillation tower or check concrete thickness & hardness at a bridge job site just doesn't appeal to them. Then, of course, there are those other reasons. Reason 2 It Sucks to Be an Engineering Student.
If 41% on the lower rungs are female, how can isolation be a problem? 40-60's not really that bad of a ratio. Also, if company's don't want to chase out talent, they shouldn't put excessive demands on the time of their technical staff. This is not a problem limited to women. Problem is, this is how company's function. And many people realize that if you're going to experience huge amounts of pressure, might as well do it in a career path that actually pays if you manage to move up the ladder.
I am an engineer. I sure as hell wish there was more women in my field than these dumbasses frat boys and holy rollers that I seem to always work with.
Some of the comments here are rather appalling. From Don Williams: “women.. like to work in areas where there’s opportunities to meet attractive husbands” From Nordy: “I'd totally bang that Asian broad.” From ash: “My ex is about to get a Doctorate in Physics, and she's not only female but a gorgeous blond with large breasts.” From gregor: From DivGuy: medicine has been “practically overrun” with women at “easily 60-70%”. Gee, by that definition, I guess Congress is “overrun” with men. (Help, they’re taking over!!) From Don Williams again: “On the other hand, there are also women who are NOT suited for SET. Engineering and Science has demanding standards.” Right. And pray tell, are there men who are NOT suited for SET? If so, what is your point? As illustrated here, the blogs are just about as friendly to women as SET workplaces are purported to be.
Some of the comments here are rather appalling. From Don Williams: “women.. like to work in areas where there’s opportunities to meet attractive husbands” From Nordy: “I'd totally bang that Asian broad.” From ash: “My ex is about to get a Doctorate in Physics, and she's not only female but a gorgeous blond with large breasts.” From gregor: From DivGuy: medicine has been “practically overrun” with women at “easily 60-70%”. Gee, by that definition, I guess Congress is “overrun” with men. (Help, they’re taking over!!) From Don Williams again: “On the other hand, there are also women who are NOT suited for SET. Engineering and Science has demanding standards.” Right. And pray tell, are there men who are NOT suited for SET? If so, what is your point? As illustrated here, the blogs are just about as friendly to women as SET workplaces are purported to be.
C'mon, Matt, you're just embarrassing yourself by linking to dopey articles like this. Go read Elaine McArdle's article in the Boston Globe. If you think it's wrong, explain why. Otherwise, find topics where you don't make yourself look like a politically correct weenie. Here's an excerpt: The freedom to say 'no' Why aren't there more women in science and engineering? Controversial new research suggests: They just aren't interested. Elaine McArdle WHEN IT COMES to the huge and persistent gender gap in science and technology jobs, the finger of blame has pointed in many directions: sexist companies, boy-friendly science and math classes, differences in aptitude. ... Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else. One study of information-technology workers found that women's own preferences are the single most important factor in that field's dramatic gender imbalance. Another study followed 5,000 mathematically gifted students and found that qualified women are significantly more likely to avoid physics and the other "hard" sciences in favor of work in medicine and biosciences. It's important to note that these findings involve averages and do not apply to all women or men; indeed, there is wide variety within each gender. The researchers are not suggesting that sexism and cultural pressures on women don't play a role, and they don't yet know why women choose the way they do. One forthcoming paper in the Harvard Business Review, for instance, found that women often leave technical jobs because of rampant sexism in the workplace. But if these researchers are right, then a certain amount of gender gap might be a natural artifact of a free society, where men and women finally can forge their own vocational paths. And understanding how individual choices shape the gender balance of some of the most important, financially rewarding careers will be critical in fashioning effective solutions for a problem that has vexed people for more than a generation. A few years ago, Joshua Rosenbloom, an economist at the University of Kansas, became intrigued by a new campaign by the National Science Foundation to root out what it saw as pervasive gender discrimination in science and engineering. The agency was spending $19 million a year to encourage mentoring programs, gender-bias workshops, and cooperative work environments. Rosenbloom had no quarrel with the goal of gender equity. But as he saw it, the federal government was spending all that money without any idea what would work, because there was no solid data on what caused the disparity between men and women in scientific fields. To help answer the question, Rosenbloom surveyed hundreds of professionals in information technology, a career in which women are significantly underrepresented. He also surveyed hundreds in comparable careers more evenly balanced between men and women. ... Personal preference, Rosenbloom and his group concluded, was the single largest determinative factor in whether women went into IT. They calculated that preference accounted for about two-thirds of the gender imbalance in the field. The study was published in November in the Journal of Economic Psychology. It may seem like a cliche - or rank sexism - to say women like to work with people, and men prefer to work with things. Rosenbloom acknowledges that, but says that whether due to socialization or "more basic differences," the genders on average demonstrate different vocational interests. "It sounds like stereotypes," he said in an interview, "but these stereotypes have a germ of truth." http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/18/the_freedom_to_say_no/?page=full
Out of silly curiosity, Steve Sailer, is it your impression that the article you just posted in any way disputes Matt's initial post? The article you just posted:
The article to which Matt links:
Note that although the NYT article doesn't ritualistically remind the reader that the women discussed are "making a choice", it seems pretty obvious for those following the subjects and verbs that that is precisely what they are discussing. The points of the articles seem to be not so much impressing people that women could possibly make career choices, but to ask 'why', which your linked article mentions but does not explore, and the NYT article begins by establishing and then asking why. Did you even read Matt's link, or did you just presume that your racially and gender enhanced IQ would allow you to know something without doing so?
I began college as a Computer Science major. At my first internship, I was lucky enough to share an office with the only other woman working in the lab. Strangers assumed that we were the administrators. Now I'm an actress. Just for the record: CS departments (and many other fields in engineering) across the country are scrambling to maintain enrollment levels of everyone, not just women. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88154024
I am quite impressed with the response capability and level of message discipline from the 'SUMMERS NEVER SAID THAT!!, and of course there's no problem with women in science!!' crowd. (No woman, no problem?). Not quite up to RonPaulite standards, but honestly, who is?
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Heads in the Sand
If you do not include medicine in this list, apart from the eminently enviable life of the researchers and academics at elite universities, these fields are quite boring, and entail a lot of mindless and routine work which is ultimately not quite fulfilling. So I would let the bastards discriminate all they want and have intelligent women who seek some sort of professional satisfaction from their work go elsewhere.
Posted by gregor | May 19, 2008 9:34 AM