Are the STEM disciplines discriminatory against women?

steddyeddy

Recently we heard Tim Hunt describe female scientists as being distracting cry babies in the lab. Some people have came out and said that this discourages women from entering science and technology jobs. My question is does it? Are these disciplines discriminatory against women or is it that women don't want to do them?

Recently we heard evidence that top finance companies discriminate against people from disadvantaged backgrounds and often bin their C.Vs. Is this what's happening in science?

I can't speak for engineering but I don't think science is discriminatory. There were one or two ill judged comments true but you can't take these comments seriously.

Actually it's not intended to be a gender war. It's a defense of science. I keep hearing again and again that science discriminates against people. Throughout all of this a story comes out saying the financial, law and accountancy sector do discriminate against people and readily admit to it.

Science has been accused of discriminating against people (girls) because they are perceived to lack the characteristics enabling them to do science.

Recently the financial sectors amongst others and their defenders on here actually justified hiring and firing people from disadvantaged backgrounds because they see them as lacking certain characteristics.

The scientist who wore a shirt with women on it and Tim hunt were attacked and nearly had their careers ruined in the media for saying far less than the financial and law sectors have been saying and yet science is the one vilified. I'm simply starting this thread in defense of science. I'll copy this into my OP to clarify my reasons for starting the thread.

Poll added.

Stheno

I've only ever worked in it and am a woman
I've encountered some sexism but its never put me off
at this stage of my career I'd be fairly senior too

fleet_admiral

Like a man trying to get a job in a creche?

GLaDOS

Not in biology in my experience, but I can't speak for other disciplines.

steddyeddy

fleet_admiral wrote: »

Like a man trying to get a job in a creche?

Not really.

c_man

In software dev hardly. Female candidates are snapped up quick as.

fleet_admiral

fleet_admiral wrote: »

Like a man trying to get a job in a creche?

Obviously not. Because we all know it's only sexist if it's towards women.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

I have decent experience in biology and chemistry and I wouldn't find it sexist.

Tiddlypeeps

I don't think it's directly discriminatory, it's even been shown that woman are given preference among equally qualified candidates for jobs in a lot of stem fields.

I do think there are cultural influences at play tho, I think women are put off at a much earlier stage than job or even college applications. It's possible it's just something to do with genetics that makes males prefer stem fields and women prefer other areas but I don't believe this is the case, I've never seen any evidence for this theory beyond "sometimes men and women are different" and I've seen a fair bit to the contrary, but nothing conclusive.

MathDebater

85% of primary school teachers in Ireland are female. Should we be looking to close that particular gender gap or should we realise that sometimes male and females gravitate towards certain fields and that's ok? I'd go with the latter myself.

NachoBusiness

Posted this on another thread but would seem that there is a lot of nonsense spoken regarding women being discriminated against in STEM fields:

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track

Our experimental findings do not support omnipresent societal messages regarding the current inhospitability of the STEM professoriate for women at the point of applying for assistant professorships. Efforts to combat formerly widespread sexism in hiring appear to have succeeded.

After decades of overt and covert discrimination against women in academic hiring, our results indicate a surprisingly welcoming atmosphere today for female job candidates in STEM disciplines, by faculty of both genders, across natural and social sciences in both mathintensive and non–math-intensive fields, and across fields already well-represented by women (psychology, biology) and those still poorly represented (economics, engineering).

Women struggling with the quandary of how to remain in the academy but till have extended leave time with new children, and debating having children in graduate school versus waiting until tenure, may be heartened to learn that female candidates depicted as taking 1-y parental leaves in our study were ranked higher by predominantly male voting faculties than identically qualified mothers who did not take leaves.

Our data suggest it is an auspicious time to be a talented woman launching a STEM tenure-track academic career, contrary to findings from earlier investigations alleging bias, none of which examined faculty hiring bias against female applicants in the disciplines in which women are underrepresented.

Our research suggests that the mechanism resulting in women’s underrepresentation today may lie more on the supply side, in women’s decisions not to apply, than on the demand side, in antifemale bias in hiring. The perception that STEM fields continue to be inhospitable male bastions can become self-reinforcing by discouraging female applicants, thus contributing to continued underrepresentation, which in turn may obscure underlying attitudinal changes.

Also, it is worth noting that female advantages come at a cost to men, who may be disadvantaged when competing against equally qualified women. Our society has emphasized increasing women’s representation in science, and many faculty members have internalized this goal. The moral implications of women’s hiring advantages are outside the scope of this article, but
clearly deserve consideration.

Real-world data ratify our conclusion about female hiring advantage. Research on actual hiring shows female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, but if they do apply, they are more likely to be hired sometimes by a 2:1 ratio. These findings of female hiring advantage were especially salient in a National Research Council report on actual hiring in six fields, five of which are mathematically intensive, at 89 doctoral-granting universities (encompassing more than 1,800 faculty hires): “once tenure-track females apply to a position, departments are on average inviting more females to interview than would be expected if gender were not a factor” .

We hope the discovery of an overall 2:1 preference for hiring women over otherwise identical men will help counter self-handicapping and opting-out by talented women at the point of entry to the STEM professoriate, and suggest that female underrepresentation can be addressed in part by increasing the number of women applying for tenure-track positions.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

dunno about discrimination but must be seriously shít being the only female in a lab or in a software house. always second guessing if people said stuff they did because you stand out and probably suffering from imposter syndrome.

steddyeddy

Cold War Kid wrote: »

Is this thread starting a gender war?

Poll added.

Actually it's not intended to be a gender war. It's a defense of science. I keep hearing again and again that science discriminates against people. Throughout all of this a story comes out saying the financial, law and accountancy sector do discriminate against people and readily admit to it.

Science has been accused of discriminating against people (girls) because they are perceived to lack the characteristics enabling them to do science.

Recently the financial sectors amongst others and their defenders on here actually justified hiring and firing people from disadvantaged backgrounds because they see them as lacking certain characteristics.

The scientist who wore a shirt with women on it and Tim hunt were attacked and nearly had their careers ruined in the media for saying far less than the financial and law sectors have been saying and yet science is the one vilified. I'm simply starting this thread in defense of science. I'll copy this into my OP to clarify my reasons for starting the thread.

Not a NSA agent

In engineering women are treated favorably. Many companies are desperate to hire women and have them in management.

Lu Tze

Surely science, of all disciplines, can come up with some results to interpret on this.

Identifying what we actually want to find out is the key, as these things (to me) always seem to be too vague.

Cold War Kid

steddyeddy wrote: »

Actually it's not intended to be a gender war. It's a defense of science.

Dammit. Apologies, that was unreasonable of me - post amended (before you quoted it :pac:).

steddyeddy

Cold War Kid wrote: »

Dammit. Apologies, that was unreasonable of me - post amended (before you quoted it :pac:).

No fair question.

Samaris

As far as I know, there's not a serious discrimination against females in the field, at least not in terms of hiring, etc.

What I would say is that my own teaching throughout secondary school was very gender-based and quite likely offputting in terms of females going into sciences. The system did its best to give us a wider choice, but things were set up against girls wanting to do science. There was a girls' secondary and a boys' secondary school. Both schools did English, Irish, Maths, Geography and a pretty wide range at JC level. At leaving cert level:

Girls
Music
Art
Business
Home Ec
French
Biology
Chemistry


Boys school
German
Latin
Tech drawing
Woodwork
Metalwork
Business
Unsure about Art.
History
Chemistry
Biology(?)
Physics

Now, we were able to go back and forth to try fit in some of these subjects - physics, history, home ec were three that I recall. But the very buildings themselves were set up for specific subjects, which would ofc make it very hard to introduce the more equipment-reliant subjects into the other school.

I think the subject choices, even if based on a historical trend, do rather speak for themselves.

lazybones32

steddyeddy wrote: »

... female scientists as being distracting cry babies in the lab. Some people have came out and said that this discourages women from entering science and technology jobs.

'We're not going to study these disciplines because someone said something mean and called us cry-babies'? Do the people who claim it discourages women from entering the STEM field actually work in one of the disciplines themselves?

I don't work in a lab but spent a nice amount of my college years in one. I never witnessed sexism among the tutors/lecturers.

I may have posted this before but I was invited to apply for a position at Humboldt University, Berlin. As I read through the job description I came to the personal section at the end, where they list the qualities they are seeking in the candidate. They made it clear that if a woman, a disabled person or an immigrant had the relevant qualifications, they would be the first consideration - to show that the University doesn't discriminate. Maybe something was lost in translation?

If the Internet didn't exist, none of this shi'ite would exist i.e. getting fired for having an opinion someone a few hundred or thousand miles away doesn't like. Seeing as the Internet was created to swap information between Scientists, only adds to the frustration.

InitiumNovum

folamh

Define discriminatory. Most STEM professions implement gender equity in a legal sense, but that doesn't mean that discrimination cannot occur on an interpersonal level. There's also the consideration of of whether female socialization makes women less likely to develop the skills that STEM fields require, which may account for why less women voluntarily apply for them.

SeanW

folamh wrote: »

Define discriminatory. Most STEM professions implement gender equity in a legal sense, but that doesn't mean that discrimination cannot occur on an interpersonal level.

Could you please clarify this, because there are two mutually exclusive definitions of "gender equality" and similar concepts (the defintion used in each usually being the one that benefits the Sisterhood).

Those are equal opportunities and equal outcomes. Which form of "gender equity" are you claiming "most STEM professions implement"?

dfx-

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Not in biology in my experience, but I can't speak for other disciplines.

Not in chemistry either in my experience. The volumes of male to female are such that you couldn't afford to be 'choosy' even if you wanted to. It's typically upwards of 4 females to each male.

hatrickpatrick

It really depends how you define discrimination. SJW types include environmental / cultural issues in their definitions of "discrimination", which, much like the inclusion of all drunken sex in their definition of "rape", tends to render their arguments fairly indefensible.

For example, Reddit's TwoX forum (allegedly a forum for women, but in reality a forum in which those women who don't espouse these extreme beliefs get downvoted to oblivion and often banned) is full of posts alleging "discrimination" because guys in the office talk about sex and "laddish" things, which are "offensive". You had the whole Adria Richards thing last year wherein a woman overheard two guys having a conversation (not even talking to her, but talking near her) and making some off-colour sexual innuendos and puns. Tweeted a creep-shot of one and got another fired.

I'll probably sound harsh when I say this, but if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I personally have been in many predominantly female project groups in college, and I for instance have no issues at all with conversations around periods and hygiene, or lads in our class they'd like to get with. By some standards, I could regard the reality of having to work in such an environment as "discrimination" and demand that they self-censor in order to not embarrass me, but I don't, because in my view that's just absolutely moronic. They're human beings and I can't walk into a group of people who know eachother and have their various inter-personal relationships, and demand that they turn the environment into a clinical, soul-less treading on eggshells setup.

Another example is that satellite t-shirt guy with sexually suggestive images on his clothes - some regarded that as "discrimination" because having to be around someone wearing something like that offend people, but IMO (and I realise I sound harsh here) in this day and age if you're that closed-minded, the problem is with you, not with the people you accuse of discrimination.

It's different if people are saying things that actually attack a demographic, such as Tim Hunt (I have no time whatsoever for that kind of sh!te, in my opinion views like that belong in the stone age just like the prudish views I allude to) - that's genuine sexism and that is something which would form the legitimate basis of a HR complaint if it was made in the lab to female colleagues or even in the presence of them. But the SJW types want to go much further than that and put literally anything that might be mildly offensive or even just taboo into a box which is off limits in almost all environments, and describe it as "discrimination" if somebody has to have their precious egg shells stepped on. Personally that devalues the word discrimination in my mind. But that's just me.

the groutch

We hope the discovery of an overall 2:1 preference for hiring women over otherwise identical men will help counter self-handicapping and opting-out by talented women at the point of entry to the STEM professoriate, and suggest that female underrepresentation can be addressed in part by increasing the number of women applying for tenure-track positions.

now THERE is your discrimination.

Massimo Cassagrande

Sexism stalking STEM? Leaf it out. Women can blossom in those fields just as well as men - just look at the budding talent at any young scientist event - it's a hothouse of mixed foliage. Only a daffodil would say there's discrimination.

Tiddlypeeps

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's different if people are saying things that actually attack a demographic, such as Tim Hunt (I have no time whatsoever for that kind of sh!te, in my opinion views like that belong in the stone age just like the prudish views I allude to) - that's genuine sexism and that is something which would form the legitimate basis of a HR complaint if it was made in the lab to female colleagues or even in the presence of them.

You may not be aware but the comment Tim Hunt made was a joke. It was followed by the phrase "now seriously" where he goes on to actually talk about women in science. Granted I think the joke was in poor taste, especially given it's setting, but anyone who actually heard the full speech couldn't possibly have been unclear about the fact he was being facetious. Yet that fact was left out of the vast majority of the media articles surrounding the topic in the days after. The mans career is literally ruined after that media witch hunt

steddyeddy

The article left out the fact his next line was "now seriously".

NOS3

I worked in a QC lab and most of the scientists were female, with a female supervisor. I didn't witness any discrimination. Thats only one lab though.

tritium

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

You may not be aware but the comment Tim Hunt made was a joke. It was followed by the phrase "now seriously" where he goes on to actually talk about women in science. Granted I think the joke was in poor taste, especially given it's setting, but anyone who actually heard the full speech couldn't possibly have been unclear about the fact he was being facetious. Yet that fact was left out of the vast majority of the media articles surrounding the topic in the days after. The mans career is literally ruined after that media witch hunt

Exactly this! The comment was pretty clearly a unthinking attempt to lighten things a bit by someone who was a bit uncomfortable in the role they found themselves in. It wasn't very well thought out but Jesus Christ did the representatives of the thought police milk it for every bit of outrage they could. Context seems to be a disposable inconvenience for some groups who are happy to target anyone or anything to get themselves the oxygen of publicity

zl1whqvjs75cdy

Agree with the above. The militant feminists went into overdrive with Tim Hunt. It was a crass joke and in poor taste but jesus chirst the man's career is over because if it. In what world is that fair?