You've been looking in the wrong direction, the dangers are coming from the Left - read OP

How can you fix the interest problem? Because I agree, it's a 'sausage fest' and a lot of that, is the patriarchy - in Ireland in the 80's, girls were actively discouraged from math & science. And the effect is obvious today, their daughters have no role models to aspire to.

Anyway, none of this is a 'danger from the left.'

I don't believe in this 'if you can't see it, you can't be it' nonsense. You can be whatever you want

That assumes there's no gatekeepers, and for women, they're men. Hence the imbalance in STEM related fields.

We got onto this arc because someone a few days ago asserted 'there's no patriarchy,' which is arrant nonsense. There's a pay gap (here's a better link than the one I googled in 5 minutes the other day)

https://www.ibec.ie/employer-hub/latest-hr-and-ir-news/news/2023/10/26/gender-pay-gap-in-ireland-2022

"According to the findings of the Central Statistics Office's Structure of Earnings Survey 2022, Ireland's Gender Pay Gap stood at 9.6% last year with the average hourly wage for men coming in at 27.73 euro and the average hourly wage for women at 25.06 euro. In economic sectors, the highest GPG was in the financial, insurance and real estate sector with the lowest GPG recorded in the education sector."

If there were ever historic 'good old boys' networks, finances and real estate sure jump to mind.

Anyway, there's a patriarchy. It's no threat from the left to point it out, or offer solutions. Women doing better in society is good for the society.

If they’ve any early interest at all, they’ll find role models, and there are plenty of role models in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Ada Lovelace’s old man was Lord Byron, he fcuked off early in her childhood and her mother insisted she be taught science and mathematics. She was mentored by Babbage and other eggheads of the period (very much the Patriarchy in effect, and a demonstration in how to use it to one’s advantage), and we know of her now because of her achievements and her contributions to computing.

There’s no shortage of role models for young girls, and I can think of many influential women in STEM before it would ever occur to me to imagine Elon Musk as a role model for young boys. So you can only imagine my dismay then when I was at an education conference on the future of education in Ireland (I’m going back a decade now before Musk made a complete balls of Twitter) and it was being given in a teacher training college - one of the speakers she stood there giving it welly about the shortage of women in STEM and all the rest of it, and how STEM is full of socially awkward men and what not, and I’m sitting there fast losing the will to live because she moves on to the topic of unconscious bias without so much as skipping a beat. She was giving the presentation to a room full of women who were training to become teachers in Ireland - about as far from STEM as it gets. That audience of women had already made their career choices, and it wasn’t STEM.

In 30 years I’ve worked with incredible women in the industry, and known many more women who were working in other fields in STEM, in industry and in academia. The thing I’ve noticed (and we’ve come a long way from the 80’s now), is that even today, women working in these industries and fields just don’t do a very good job of inspiring young girls to want to get into the industry, or follow in their footsteps. It’s not entirely their fault though, when young girls are bombarded daily by the same old tripe that indicates to them that their value isn’t in what’s between their ears, if you catch my drift?

Girls aren’t just being discouraged from science, technology, engineering and mathematics, they’re still being encouraged to think of how they can best serve society in terms of caring roles, and that’s showing in the fact that in spite of the increasing numbers of young girls and women participating in education, it’s not transferring into employment and careers in the same way as young boys are still taught to be providers and breadwinners. There’s very little in the way of rewards for those who go against the grain.

The thread title is misleading as far as I’m concerned because nothing from the left has ever arisen to the level where I’d consider it in any way dangerous to society, though the thread title doesn’t lend itself to disasters coming from the left. However in that regard, just by way of one example and one reason why the social, behavioural and political sciences are becoming increasingly popular third level courses, is because of the increased focus in higher education not on STEM, but on nauseating programmes like the Athena SWAN programme:

https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/equality-charters/international-charters/athena-swan-ireland

Obviously, if it had just limited itself to promoting opportunities for women, it would have had focus and could actually have made solid strides for women. Instead, because of their need to expand the business model so to speak - they’ve diversified and lost their focus on women, becoming more entrenched in ideas like being as diverse as they possibly could achieve, without any actual real-world evidence of their impact on education for young women.

Can’t blame The Patriarchy for that mess, though hopefully there will still be plenty of women who are more interested in STEM than women who are interested in gender studies, no thanks to programmes like SWAN 😒

You stated that "every child should be given every chance to take a career in anything the like irrespective of gender". I asked you how there weren't any pointed out that the CAO system proves they are. Anyone is free to apply for STEM courses and the CAO system ensures that the colleges get the best students regardless of gender. If STEM courses are filled with males it's because that's what interests them, not because the colleges favour males. If females aren't applying to STEM courses then that's reflective of their interests, not because they are somehow restricted..

I was thinking sociology/social sciences as the specific branch, but anyway:

… drawing on knowledge from various academic fields including law, geography, history, and numerous social sciences…

https://www.ucd.ie/esc/studyequalityatucd/graduatestudies/

Social Sciences students explore society and how people behave as individuals and in groups.

https://www.myucd.ie/courses/social-sciences/

Anything else

https://www.ucd.ie/socscilaw/

You'll find a phone number at the bottom of the page if you need further clarification.

While we move to this 50/50, do women get a choice in what they will work at.

Do we tell them to get down to waste management companies, get down to FAS to learn trades.

The majority of stay at home parents are women, do we tell them to get back to work and get fathers to take over to get it to 50/50.

Or is it just office jobs where we need to discriminate against men.

@One eyed Jack :

"

In 30 years I’ve worked with incredible women in the industry, and known many more women who were working in other fields in STEM, in industry and in academia. The thing I’ve noticed (and we’ve come a long way from the 80’s now), is that even today, women working in these industries and fields just don’t do a very good job of inspiring young girls to want to get into the industry, or follow in their footsteps. It’s not entirely their fault though, when young girls are bombarded daily by the same old tripe that indicates to them that their value isn’t in what’s between their ears, if you catch my drift?

"

Agreed - question, was that 30 years of women in STEM in Ireland, or elsewhere? I don't see a lot of female CEO's and CTO's in Ireland firms. Still pretty 1980's here. Other countries have done somewhat better.

Honest question. Do you know many women that want to spend 8/10+ hours a day stuck in front of a PC/Laptop coding in Python, C++, SQL or any other programming code/language?

I don't know many men that do, btw.

I'd ask on what grounds your basing that, but it's something you'd be better off taking up with the scientists themselves.

I get the impression the objections are more to the idea of a Department of Equality and Inclusion (or whatever it was called) in the first place than to the appointment. I'm not really in a position to say whether it's important or warranted or not and fairly neutral on the issue. I'm really not seeing it as a threat (at least not compared to misinformation-led riots).

I’d see the dangers/risks on something this like is that it will infer a right to something, purely based off an arbitrary number or quota that needed to be met. It gifts opportunity purely based on a characteristic over skills or qualifications, it’s obviously not as violent or destructive as a riot (quite the comparison, by the way), it does however kneecap a company or organisations way of hiring appropriately for a position.

I’ll also point out, generally with these quotas, we see them in industries like tech, business or science. Rarely, will we see a push for a 50/50 spilt (just to pick a number for the discussion), for something like a builder, trades like plumbing, electrician, brickie, army quotas, or things like binmen or street cleaners. They are always for fairly cushy numbers that have higher pay, benefits and so on, not for blue collar industries. How convenient…

I know you’re not engaging with a goal of misleading here, but I really think these are a false equivalency and bad comparisons to make.

There is a very real threat from far-right orgs, and they present that threat in a very visceral way. I don’t put the threat (let’s just call it that for now) from far-left actions the same as a riot, they can however have an impact in different aspects of society. I know you’re not in favour of quotas, nor am I, I am equally not in favour of a consultant preaching about diversity as I see no real merits in it as a concept. If there really needs to be a change to tackle this, it has to happen from an early age, like school.

If we look at that though, there is evidence to show that males and females lean towards different vocations naturally, females have a nurturing nature so go to things like teaching, nursing, hairdressing and so on. Males lean towards more physical vocations, hence more in the army, building, and competitive endeavours like business etc. There obviously crossovers, I’m not saying only females do X and only males do Y, if someone is hired as a consultant to a tech company, and they say “you’ve got a male dominant workforce, you need to make that 50/50” what would that even achieve? And where would it stop?

I see it here in Canada, there is this push to have “people of colour” for certain roles, what exactly does that achieve? Companies purposely narrow their hiring pool with nonsense like this, it really makes very little sense as a practice, and to me it’s just buckling to a very vocal sect of society. It’s more so done out of fear for being called out as not hiring a black person, or a woman, or a “insert other characteristic”, companies should hire the best they can, regardless of who they are or what they look like.

Agreed - question, was that 30 years of women in STEM in Ireland, or elsewhere? I don't see a lot of female CEO's and CTO's in Ireland firms. Still pretty 1980's here. Other countries have done somewhat better.

30 years of working being involved in various fields of employment and education here in Ireland, in small to medium enterprise and in multinational, multicultural corporations. It’s still pretty 1980’s everywhere if you’re talking about drawing comparisons between countries on the basis of whether CEOs in those countries are men or women - the vast majority of CEOs in any country are men, but that isn’t an indication of their performance, because the vast majority of CEOs are not the head of Fortune 500 companies in their respective countries, or even in their respective industries or employment sectors.

Again in that regard I’m biased though - I know I’m viewing the market from my perspective, and in that sense it’s not a coincidence that I’d be more attuned to perceiving women in leadership positions as exceptional, and most men in leadership positions as just average, by virtue of the fact that there are simply more men in leadership positions. I’d be more wary about drawing any conclusions about performance or an ability to fulfil the role based on correlations though - that sort of biased judgement can influence ideas like imagining that people with dyslexia somehow make better CEOs solely by virtue of the fact that they’re dyslexic -

https://chiefexecutive.net/quarter-ceos-dyslexic-says-ciscos-john-chambers/

I wouldn’t be making that correlation, knowing that people who are dyslexic are also over-represented in unemployment statistics in the first place, due to struggling in education that isn’t accommodating of their needs.

In Ireland though there isn’t the same culture of fostering entrepreneurship as there is in countries like the US, and although it’s improving for women in the last couple of years, there’s still that sense of tokenism rather than genuine investment in fostering entrepreneurship among women in terms of the supports available to them from State bodies and investment opportunities by private investors.

How convenient…

Not nearly as convenient as your ‘evidence’ that shows that males and females lean towards different vocations naturally, females have a nurturing nature so go to things like teaching, nursing, hairdressing and so on. Males lean towards more physical vocations, hence more in the army, building, and competitive endeavours like business etc. That demonstrates correlation, not causation.

It’s why equality legislation was necessary in the first place - because employers did show a preference for employing men, and only employing women when there was a scarcity of men in the domestic workforce due to men being drafted for military service in times of war.

The perceptions and preconceived ideas of men and women’s abilities still fuels that discrimination today, which is why quotas were deemed necessary - in order to promote positive discrimination where candidates are equally qualified and their suitability for a role isn’t determined by their sex, gender or indeed the colour of their skin (you hardly needed to go to Canada to observe the phenomenon).

With regards to the whole idea of there being no quotas for employment involving manual labour such as trades (there are quotas involved there too in apprenticeships - https://archive.ph/rm3AL), street cleaners and waste management (I’m not sure you’ve noticed, but modern technology has removed much of the manual labour involved in that industry), it’s simply because the barriers to entry are not the same - both men and women can choose employment as street cleaners if they wish, and office cleaners are predominantly women (again, not sure you’ve noticed), but when it comes to employment opportunities in professional industry sectors - women and people who are members of minority groups, such as people with disabilities, face greater barriers in employment opportunities than those who are assumed to be a more suitable candidate for the role simply by virtue of the fact that they are men.

That is the complete opposite of companies should hire the best they can, regardless of who they are or what they look like, and it’s because employers don’t judge candidates objectively, but rather they judge candidates subjectively, is the reason why equality legislation and quotas are necessary in employment. Where does it stop? It doesn’t, nor should it, because it applies regardless of what a candidate looks like or ‘who they are’ in the sense that it applies equally to men seeking employment in sectors traditionally dominated by women or based upon other characteristics which were used to discriminate against people in employment.

It’s really nothing to do with ‘The Left’. Objectively it’s a sensible measure in terms of increasing participation in the labour market which in turn has the benefit of increasing productivity which in turn contributes to a country’s economic development and prosperity. That’s just basic economics though, no need for a degree in the bloody obvious.

No, I’m not making your point. Your point is that because women have a more nurturing nature and men have a more competitive nature, this provides an explanation for their choices of vocation (we’re talking about employment, not vocations, there’s a difference), which is, not to put too fine a point on it - a load of nonsense. Men are equally capable of being nurturing as women are competitive. Your argument is a lot of the reason why there exists the stereotype of deadbeat fathers and mothers being perceived as being more capable of providing care for children. That hasn’t always been the case either, there was a time when fathers were granted custody of children by default.

And no, the sheer numbers involved in any particular industry wouldn’t make your point, all it does is confirm your own cherry-picked biases - like ignoring the fact that the majority of office cleaners (and domestic cleaners for that matter, or childcare workers, another low paid employment), are women. I don’t see hordes of men clamouring for low-paid cleaning or childcare jobs either, seeing as you make the point about how women don’t have any interest in low-paying manual labour jobs which are dominated by men.

More women being nurses than men has nothing to do with war? I’m right about war and the economic impact of war on the domestic labour market in that it meant a scarcity of men to fill jobs which still needed to be done, and so the same jobs were filled by women. That was out of necessity, not because employers had any real choice in the matter if they wished to continue to remain in business. It’s not the least bit odd or surprising that the draft meant there were more men in military service than women. The men weren’t there by choice either, and conscientious objectors were viewed as unpatriotic cowards, until of course the reality of war began to hit close to home. Muhammad Ali as one example, failed to qualify for military service because his writing and spelling skills were sub-standard, but when the standards were lowered (again, out of necessity, not because of any particular impetus towards equality), Ali made a rather obvious observation:

Ali also famously said in 1966: "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong." and "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?"

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/-muhammad-ali-convicted-refusing-vietnam-draft

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_v._United_States

Nothing odd whatsoever about it.