Thread: Women in science Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
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Yesterday was Ada Lovelace Day, which set me wondering about how few women are involved in the physical sciences, and how that doesn't seem to make sense.
Now, someone will object, the Church hardly has a shining record on this. Very true. But in the twenty years since women were able to become priests in the Church of England, we've now reached the point where more women than men are being ordained. By contrast, it's now - what? - 60 or 70 years since women started being awarded science degrees in the UK, and only about 10% of science professors are women.
Why do we think the progress of women in science has gone so slowly? And if the answer is that male-dominated science departments are institutionally misogynistic, does this undermine any claims that science can provide a paradigm of rationalist thinking that can guide contemporary society?
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on
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You might find this project of interest.
It's a pipeline of issues: making girls aware of SET careers at an early stage; supporting them in academic study (when they may be just one or two on an engineering course); addressing workplace attitudes through diversity training; enabling flexibility in career structure (career breaks, part-time working); encouraging networking and mentoring; identifying women who have achieved success and promoting them as role models - which in turn feeds back into attracting more girls to SET careers.
Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Yesterday was Ada Lovelace Day, which set me wondering about how few women are involved in the physical sciences, and how that doesn't seem to make sense.
Now, someone will object, the Church hardly has a shining record on this. Very true. But in the twenty years since women were able to become priests in the Church of England, we've now reached the point where more women than men are being ordained. By contrast, it's now - what? - 60 or 70 years since women started being awarded science degrees in the UK, and only about 10% of science professors are women.
Why do we think the progress of women in science has gone so slowly? And if the answer is that male-dominated science departments are institutionally misogynistic, does this undermine any claims that science can provide a paradigm of rationalist thinking that can guide contemporary society?
I can't comment on women in science, but I think even before women could become priests in the CoE women made up a large part of the church in terms of volunteers, deacons, children's workers etc. Even in say, the RCC, a man may be in charge but it's women who do the legwork and keep the church going.
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus
And if the answer is that male-dominated science departments are institutionally misogynistic, does this undermine any claims that science can provide a paradigm of rationalist thinking that can guide contemporary society?
Obviously misogyny is a serious problem, but I wouldn't concern yourself as to whether this could undermine "any claims that science can provide a paradigm of rationalist thinking that can guide contemporary society".
The reason is, of course, that science cannot do this anyway, because that is outside its scope. Science deals with the natural world, which, as we know, does not deliver any 'oughts' to us. Nature just is. Period. That's it. Science can say nothing more than nature can tell us.
Of course, certain scientists can pretend to be the new clergy. And I guess if they have an audience, then they can pull it off. But not with any recourse to reason.
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
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I think what Adeodatus had in mind was any notion that scientific knowledge and method stand on their own independently of who discovers the knowledge or uses the method. This is certainly of the essence of science, and any resistance to who joins the community would deny it.
To refer to something I muttered just a little while ago in another thread-- wouldn't you have to agree that as long as the Taliban etc. maintain such resistance to the extent they do, their outlook is inimical to the practice of science among them?
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Even before women could become priests in the CoE women made up a large part of the church in terms of volunteers, deacons, children's workers etc. Even in say, the RCC, a man may be in charge but it's women who do the legwork and keep the church going.
Quite, and not just in the CoE. In The Church Impotent, Leon Podles discusses this fact at considerable length. Clergymen may have the titles and be formally on the throne, but then there are the powers behind the throne... AKA balance.
Any such balance is now threatened.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
I think what Adeodatus had in mind was any notion that scientific knowledge and method stand on their own independently of who discovers the knowledge or uses the method. This is certainly of the essence of science, and any resistance to who joins the community would deny it.
It seems to me you've got this exactly backwards. If scientific knowledge and methods really are the same regardless of who discovers or uses them, then the exclusion of any particular class of person is fundamentally irrelevant to the essence of science.
Not irrelevant to the principles of justice or equality, of course. But I rather doubt we're ever going to look back on the history of (say) particle physics and say those scientists were somehow being untrue to science, or that their results were unscientific, because they discriminated against women. (I suspect there are fields where the exclusion of a particular gender might be found to have a material effect on the conclusions reached, but the OP did specify the physical sciences.)
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
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The authority of science rests on the reproduceability of results by anyone who goes to the trouble of making the experiments. This authority is compromised by discouraging anyone from doing just that.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
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This makes no sense to me at all. Does this mean the experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider should be considered less authoritative because women are discriminated against in the physical sciences?
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
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Yes.
There have actually been efforts among a few radical feminists to denigrate science as only a male endeavor, and therefore of limited significance. Very post-modern.
Posted by Imaginary Friend (# 186) on
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Sidestepping Alogon's mildly incomprehensible position for a moment, I would like to make an observation based on my short career in the academic world of physical science.
The observation is that there are many more women at the post-grad and post-doc levels than there were even a few years ago. They are still in the minority, but not by a huge amount, especially in the experimental branches of physics. There are also more women professors than there were - although admittedly they are significantly in the minority. So the direction of travel is the right one, even if it is perhaps a little slow.
In fact, I would also say that if there was an inequity that should be addressed it is the number of people of African-American descent in the physical sciences, which is astonishingly small.
Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on
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It seems like there's a growing number of women in Academic positions and as college students. If history is a guide, unfortunately the feminization of the job is usually followed by a cut in prestige and pay for the job. ( secretary, phone operator, medical technition.
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:
Sidestepping Alogon's mildly incomprehensible position for a moment,
Perhaps I went too far in saying "yes", i.e. the experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider should be considered less authoritative because women are discriminated against in the physical sciences. But we must recognize that they are. And frankly I am rather at a loss to say why they shouldn't be.
Googling for "feminism science" brings up, at the top, this article, Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I certainly can't promise that this explanation will make an incomprehensible idea any less so, but it does articulate reservations entertained in a learned school of thought.
This sentence, at least, is easy to understand:
"Gender differences in knowledge and background beliefs can be reduced if men and women participate in inquiry together." Especially when this is being done in many disciplines, but hard science is a deliberate holdout exception, I must agree that it is suspicious and, given science's claims to universal legitimacy, hypocritical.
I'm also remembering John Polkinghorne's caution that raw data in places like the Hadron Collider is totally meaningless without interpretation by trained people. We are far beyond Galileo's dropping two balls from a height and letting everyone see that they land in the water at the same time.
Posted by Dal Segno (# 14673) on
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My experience is that those who succeed best in science research are those who are totally focussed on that research to the exclusion of all else. That requires a support structure for the person that will organise their food, laundry, and housing so that they can concentrate on the research. That support structure can be an organisation (e.g., Google's in-house catering, an Oxbridge college's residential accommodation) or can be a willing partner. Traditionally women are less likely to find a willing partner to look after these needs than are men.
One result of this tendency is that male scientists who choose to take a full part in their family life and a full share of household responsibility will find that their scientific career does not proceed as well as those men who do not have these "distractions."
Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Dal Segno:
My experience is that those who succeed best in science research are those who are totally focussed on that research to the exclusion of all else.
The above is probably the main reason. Linked to that, it is still considered "unfeminine" / "unattractive" for a young woman to be a bookworm and/or to find her vocation in the Lab. Even worse for a woman to require a support structure.
And girls, who are -just as boys- very much influenced by tastes and priorities and lifestyle models shared by their "peers", will more or less unconsciously adapt to these lifestyle / behavioural patterns which will make them "attractive". It's sad, of course, but natural.
There's a nice song by Pelle Carlberg, "Clcver girls like clever boys more than clever girls like clever boys"
here
Well, c'est la vie. Get on with it.
Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on
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That doesn't really explain why there is a particular problem in physical sciences as opposed to other disciplines. Academic and career success in any discipline requires drive and dedication. Women doctors would be the obvious counter-example.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:
I would like to make an observation based on my short career in the academic world of physical science.
The observation is that there are many more women at the post-grad and post-doc levels than there were even a few years ago.
Which is my observation too. When I did my PhD of the 15-20 students who went through that particular group (nuclear structure physics) only 2 were women, my recollection of the summer school was that that proportion of about 10% women was about right across the UK community. It didn't seem much different elsewhere in physics. A few of that generation of PhD students are now professors (15-20 years from PhD to professor is a fairly rapid career progression), though the majority of professors came through their PhDs at least 5 years before then. The current ratio of women in professorial positions is, in part, a reflection of the number of women entering PhDs 25+ years ago, also in part reflecting the number of women studying science at 'A' level (or equivalent) 5 years before that.
Over the last few years when I've been supervising physics student projects I have supervised more women than men - 6 women and 3 men to be precise. The number of women entering physics has increased dramatically, but we'll need to wait at least 10-15 years before we see that increase reflected in the number of women physics professors.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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I guess it is all about providing opportunity and encouraging folks to look beyond cultural norms to the more obvious question of what they are, are can be, good at, given their gifts and talents.
That's not just a Women in Science issue of course, but it does apply there. I was glad to read IF and Alan's observations, suggesting that there has been at least some weakening of unhelpful and restrictive cultural norms.
So far as the accuracy of scientific findings goes, I don't see what gender has to do with the ongoing processes of peer review for scientific findings. That seems to be a misunderstanding about what makes such findings credible.
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on
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Generally speaking, in order to be 'successful' in an academic career (at least in the UK), you need to be a Professor. Before that you're usually on a fixed term, then fixed track progression. It is now fairly common for academics to have to work on several fixed term contracts (first as a postgraduate researcher then as a junior lecturer) before getting onto the permanent lectureship track.
As I understand the system, the lectureship track has a fixed pay scale, whereas Professorships are negotiated individually.
Anyway, the point is that there is a significant amount of work needed before you even get onto the permanent lectureship track - undergraduate degree, doctorate, postgraduate research (for 5+ years in some case), several fixed term lectureships. And when you get to apply for a permanent lectureship, you are assessed on your research portfolio you've developed over that time (which might easily add up to the last 10 years since you got your doctorate).
So if you're not committed and have produced a lot of good quality research papers by that point, you might not even be able to get onto the permanent lectureship track. For most people getting to that point will require more than full time work.
And then when you become a permanent lecturer, you are often expected to continue producing academic papers at a high rate whilst taking on a considerable amount of teaching. Often this means that you'll be doing more work than you were before. Sometimes when you become a Professor the pressure gets taken off, but usually it is considerably worse as you're co-opted onto other administrative roles as well as a pile of research and teaching.
It is not uncommon for science Professors to therefore be working very long days for 6 or 7 days a week, traveling to many conferences and having other academic commitments like being an editor of an academic journal. Because of the kind of people that they are (read:workaholics), they often take on a lot of work in other areas of life, such as the church.
The end result is that science Professors at the top of their game are usually either middle aged men with wives who take almost full responsibility for children, managing the house etc, youngish single people or older spinster women.
There are not many academics that I can think of who are middle aged married women, even in academic (scientific) fields where there are a high proportion of women. And there is a fair drop-off of women (in particular) before they get to become permanent lecturers and Professors, particularly as they begin to have children.
And so the message that is given to young academics who are female is to get married to the job or forget becoming a successful academic. Hence many simply leave and take better paid employment in the private sector.
[there is a considerable muddying of terms in the UK system at the moment. Traditionally Professors were the 'chair' of particular departments and the defacto head of department. But in the best research universities, there are now many departments which contain many full Professors. At the same time, some universities are changing the job titles from lecturer/senior lecturer to junior and associate Professor. So it is now possible to have professor in your job title without being a 'chair' and the associated benefits in terms of payscale, etc]
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
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I teach science and engineering in a primary school, and I don't see any gender difference in aptitude - if anything, the girls are more willing to learn as the boys sometimes have the "I've been building stuff for years" attitude, with the consequence that many of my more able pupils are girls.
When I was doing A level physics, my physics teacher was appallingly sexist. Out of a class of 20, there were 3 girls, and they had to put up with his stupid, ignorant comments every single lesson. And yes, the rest of us complained, seemingly to no avail. It was the 80s - a reason, not an excuse.
Geology was mostly blokes. With beards. There were no tenured women and only a couple of women post-grads. My year had 5 women out of 25 students, one of which has gone on to become a well-known vulcanologist, but I don't know of the trajectory of the others. The difference between A level and degree level was marked - I saw no obvious sexism in either university I studied at, despite the all-male staff and mostly male students.
But what the long ranger says about drop-off rings true. An academic/research post will consume as many hours as you're willing to give it. I don't know if the same is true in other non-science departments, but having someone at home to do all (and I mean all) the other stuff was virtually compulsory.
This situation is, of course, not fair on either sex, and having a more realistic workload when it comes to supervision and lecturing, whilst being an active researcher and keeping up with the rest of your field, and writing proposals and papers and attending conferences is critical to retaining the best scientists at university, not just the socially inept ones.
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
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My original point was that one might (naively?) hope that rational thinking might seep over from the practice of science itself and into the construction of scientific communities such as, say, university physics departments. One might at least hope that in such communities, prejudice - including misogyny - would not exist. It seems odd that, at first glance, Britain's physics departments seem to be less good at this than the Church of England is.
I accept everything that's been said about the level of dedication, commitment, and the sheer quantity of work that's involved in a science career - but is it really much more than, for instance, a senior NHS manager (of which many are women) or a priest in a large, busy parish?
When I was a physics undergraduate I think there were four women in a class of about twenty. When I worked in a meteorology department, there were no women academics at all. That was all about 25-30 years ago, and those positions seem not to have changed all that much.
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I accept everything that's been said about the level of dedication, commitment, and the sheer quantity of work that's involved in a science career - but is it really much more than, for instance, a senior NHS manager (of which many are women) or a priest in a large, busy parish?
If those roles involve full 9-5 days with additional work in the early morning or into the late evening, extra at the weekend, foreign conferences and additional administrative roles - none of these paid any extra whatsoever - then no. Otherwise yes.
My observation of clerical/ministerial roles in churches is that they're far more friendly to women than the average academic science role. Academics are workaholics almost by their nature.
I don't know about NHS managers, I couldn't comment on those.
quote:
When I was a physics undergraduate I think there were four women in a class of about twenty. When I worked in a meteorology department, there were no women academics at all. That was all about 25-30 years ago, and those positions seem not to have changed all that much.
I honestly doubt it is about the subject but the demands of the role. Even in subjects like mathematics, where there are many more women, the drop-off in higher levels of academic positions is very pronounced.
It kinda says something when highly trained academics find demanding roles in the non-academic sector to be more family friendly than in the universities. Clearly it depends on the subject, but it is reasonably common for them to involve shorter hours, less demands and higher pay.
Even in Meteorology (of which I know little), I have friends who moved from unstable roles in universities to better roles in government or industry.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
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I suspect the problem is as much at the school level as anything else. Those of us who teach in schools have to be very careful not to reinforce perceptions of "male" and "female" professions. In some ways the school I teach in is fortunate in not only having a limited subject choice but not teaching biology at all, which provides a strong pressure for everyone to take the physical sciences and maths, not just boys. At that age wanting to to what is expected by your peers is a strong urge.
Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on
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I don't know f anyone else has seen this video http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9349923/Science-girl-thing-video-branded-offensive.html which was released by the European commission this year to promote women in science. It is quite shocking in it's sexism and might go some way to help explain the barriers that exist.
Posted by Flossymole (# 17339) on
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Yes - that is horrible.
[QUOTE] Michael Jennings, the EC's science spokesman, wrote on Twitter: "[The] Commission doesn't really do irony. Hope was to get young people onto [the] site. That seems to be happening!"
He later added: "Lots of comments on #sciencegirlthing vid. 45 seconds of fun for launch to grab attention. Not central to main campaign [QUOTE]
I hope his afterthought reflects their real thinking.
It's a fact that girls have good biological reasons for wanting to find mates and bear children in early adulthood and kids (and occasionally mates) take up a lot of time and attention. It would be interesting to hear from any women who have embarked on new careers in science later in life. It seems to be more of a possibility now universities are more open to accepting mature students. Or is the best scientific research work always done by younger brains? Any info?
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Flossymole:
It would be interesting to hear from any women who have embarked on new careers in science later in life. It seems to be more of a possibility now universities are more open to accepting mature students. Or is the best scientific research work always done by younger brains? Any info?
Well, I'm not a woman. But I work at a college that specialises in both adult education and serious research, and is proud of its traditiions of supporting and promoting women in science. (I think the first woman university professor in and English university was here over a century ago - pretty certainly the first in a science subject - she was also an air force officer with the equivalent ranlk of a Commodore - some people have eventful lives).
Checking our Biological Sciences website (because its the bit of both science and this college that I know best) about 20 out of 50 researchers are women (guessing by their names, I might be calling some wrong), only 3 out of 15 lab managers and senior technicians, and maybe 14 or 15 out of 39 academic staff. On the other hand 4 out of 8 professors are women (including I think our only current FRS)
Better than a lot of other places but still not very good. There is clearly inequality here. My guess - its only a guess - is that selection against women (which might be self-selection of course) comes most strongly at the stage of graduation - women are probably a small majority of undergraduate students, about half of postgrads, but a minority of academics and full-time researchers. So maybe bright male students are more likely to turn study into a career than equivalent women are. Or les likely to be turned down when they try to.
Physics and chemistry are a different matter. I suspec the selection there comes earlier. There is still a popular feeling that "maths is hard" and not suitable for girls (or all but the geekiest boys). The schools my daughter went to somehow managed to give girls the impression that maths, and mathematical sciences, were not for them. I know the teachers didn't think they were doing that, they woudl be horrified at the idea that they were doing that, they were desperate not to do that, but they were doing it.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
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This is one of the stupid things, of course. Maths is hard, especially at A level, and ditto Physics. Both are highly technical subjects that require not only a decent memory but, contrary to expectations, flair and imagination.
But you could say that of English or History or Art. Why is it that girls with the aptitude to excel at academic subjects get deflected away from the sciences at this stage - which is where (IIRC, the IoP have just done a survey of this) the problem seems to start.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
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I'm not sure, ken, that the bias against girls in maths and physics comes from the teachers (though there is certainly still some of that), I think it comes more from the peer group and indeed from a lot of parents and other adults. The difference in attitude to science in single sex schools is interesting here.
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on
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The irony is that girls are generally better at maths than boys, and quite a few of the very best Mathematicians are women. I don't know about physics, but academic women mathematicians are hugely in demand.
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
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There's something very odd about the premise of the OP. At least in the US, boys are abandoning higher education in record numbers. College enrollment is wildly skewed to female students now. And the problem is that the few boys who do go to college are in the majority in technical colleges? Are we so insistent that sexism has to be the problem that we ignore reality entirely?
--Tom Clune
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Perhaps I went too far in saying "yes", i.e. the experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider should be considered less authoritative because women are discriminated against in the physical sciences. But we must recognize that they are. And frankly I am rather at a loss to say why they shouldn't be. ... "Gender differences in knowledge and background beliefs can be reduced if men and women participate in inquiry together." ... I'm also remembering John Polkinghorne's caution that raw data in places like the Hadron Collider is totally meaningless without interpretation by trained people.
Physics, and high energy physics in particular, is not sociology. The idea of gender bias in the interpretation of LHC data is ... interesting. If you could perhaps mention a single instance where physics was actually held back by the lack of "female perspective"? I don't mean by the lack of female physicists. Good physicists are rare, and its silly to leave half the talent pool untapped. But I'm somewhat struggling here to think of anything in physics itself that requires a female perspective. Or a male perspective. Or any perspective, really...
(As it happens, my best friend from high energy physics days, and the only one of them still in the field, is a German-Turkish woman who now is a departmental lecturer in Oxford, though currently in fact living in France because she is working at the LHC... I remember hearing quite a bit of her perspectives on various bits of physics in our study group. But I never thought of them as being particularly right or wrong, negligible or impressive, because of her being a woman. If there was a need to evaluate her theories that involved checking the data and the maths, not her femininity.)
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
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quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
There's something very odd about the premise of the OP. At least in the US, boys are abandoning higher education in record numbers. College enrollment is wildly skewed to female students now. And the problem is that the few boys who do go to college are in the majority in technical colleges? Are we so insistent that sexism has to be the problem that we ignore reality entirely?
Yes, I was thinking something similar to this as well. It's as if all the areas where girls massively outnumber boys are considered to be perfectly normal, but the few areas where boys outnumber girls (and not by nearly the same margin, if the University I work for is typical) are because of rampant sexism holding the girls back.
Is the 5:1 ratio in favour of girls in one subject here because boys are being discriminated against? I doubt anyone would try to suggest that, so why should a 2:1 ratio in favour of boys in another subject be such a massive issue?
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
This makes no sense to me at all. Does this mean the experimental results from the Large Hadron Collider should be considered less authoritative because women are discriminated against in the physical sciences?
One of our former churchwardens, a woman, is one of the physicists working at the collider. We used to have to schedule meetings around her visits.
I cremated a woman physicist earlier this year.
But the fact that i mention these shows how rare they are.
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But the fact that i mention these shows how rare they are.
Or perhaps how predictable you are...
--Tom Clune
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But the fact that i mention these shows how rare they are.
Please tell me your job involves cremating only physicists. Because that is an awesome - if unlikely - profession.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
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ken wrote: quote:
Physics and chemistry are a different matter. I suspec the selection there comes earlier. There is still a popular feeling that "maths is hard" and not suitable for girls (or all but the geekiest boys). The schools my daughter went to somehow managed to give girls the impression that maths, and mathematical sciences, were not for them. I know the teachers didn't think they were doing that, they woudl be horrified at the idea that they were doing that, they were desperate not to do that, but they were doing it.
Are you sure about that, ken? It's just that I've spent quite a while discussing this with both my daughters, and their message was firmly that it was peer group pressure where they were at school - certain subjects are "unfeminine". It wasn't the staff or the boys in their opinion - the attitudinal problem was primarily other young women. Of course, they would have had to get that from somewhere to start with, but even so...
You could probably say much the same about the falling numbers of boys in certain situations - the attitude that caring about your education is "girly" amounts to pretty much the same thing.
Posted by Anyuta (# 14692) on
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as a very liberal, female scientist mother of a son (and a daughter), I have to agree with Marvin and others here. yes, there is some discrimination against women in the scientific fields (I could share some experiences of my own), but I certainly do not think that science itself is somehow compromised by this (other than by potential lack of talent). I don't even understand the logic behind this idea.
And more importantly perhaps, there is the concern of bias against BOYS in much of our education system. Some of it self-generated (boys for whatever reason don't want to be associated with "girly" things... education is becoming a girly thing.. hence boys are less interested in academics). But some of it is the very nature of our system of education: sit still and listen for hours, don't goof around, don't be physical, read and listen instead of experience... and by the way we are cutting out recess and PE, so there is no opportunity to burn off that extra energy, or a break from all that need to focus.
I don't think that the nature of academia is the only explanation for boys dropping out.. after all, males have certainly managed in the past to sit though lecture after lecture, focusing and not acting out.
In any case, that males and females have different skills and interests is not, by itself, proof of discrimination, or something which MUST be rectified. It certainly can be, particularly if talented members of the "wrong" sex are not allowed to succeed, or extra hurdles are placed in their way. But the simple fact that many women are not interested in the hard sciences may just be a mater of gender difference. as was pointed out, there are certainly other fields where females dominate, and we don't spend a great deal of energy encouraging men to enter those fields.
We need to try to remove any bariers that may exist for ANY capable and motivated individual in excelling in any field. But we can't change human nature. and I can assure you that, although I worked very hard at eliminating any gender bias in how I raised my kids, there were behavior/attitude/aptitude differences right from the start. something as simple as how they play with toys.. my daughter had a collection of machbox cars (my own collection from my childhood, supplemented by new purchases). she would happily play with them. in her play the cars would have conversations with each other, and then drive off together to engage in some anthropomorphic activity. when my son was the same age, he played with the same collection of cars. when he played the cars when BRRRRRRoommmm skreeeeeech SMASH (imagine typical carcrash sound effects). they did NOT have conversations about their feelings.
And that's OK. my daughter is studying to be an anthropolgist, and also wants to be a writer (on the side). my son will probably be an engineer or architect, or perhaps a computer programer (too early to tell). I can assure you that "anthropologist" was not even remotely on my list of future careers I envisioned for my children (male or female).
And I'm sure each of them will excel in their chosen fields, and I'm sure that in their fields they will primarily be surrounded by others of their own gender--and that's fine too, provided no one is mandating or in any other way encouraging it to be so. and of course, provided the two career paths are paid comparably.
And this is where I DO see a problem... overall, and in general, we as a society tend to value female dominated professions less than male dominated professions, and pay them less, regardless of actual importance to society or level of effort (or education) required to perform the job. I think it's no accident that the medical profession, for example, is starting to be less lucrative and valued now that women are starting to dominate (at least in general practice).
There is still plenty of sexism in the world, but I just don't believe that the relative lack of women in science is a major example of this.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
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With the greatest of respect, Anyuta, the fact that you didn't encourage gender stereotypes in your children doesn't mean that the tendencies you have observed were inate. Society in general constantly reinforces gender roles and norms. Even going into most toy shops you will find "girls' toys" and "boys' toys".
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Is the 5:1 ratio in favour of girls in one subject here because boys are being discriminated against? I doubt anyone would try to suggest that, so why should a 2:1 ratio in favour of boys in another subject be such a massive issue?
The problem is this: there is no obvious bar to men entering what is perceived to be a 'female' subject or profession, while the reverse is not true.
I work in a Primary school, where there are only three men on the staff, vis 20 or so women. If more men wanted to join the staff, there'd be no problem.
Now, for whatever reason, the ratio of male to female physicists is very high, and it appears that women are being put off the hard sciences at around the 14-16 age, which then multiplies the effect throughout the profession.
I'd argue that this is a cause for concern far more than men not being engaged in Primary education, which certainly is a problem, but a different one.
In my own field (SF), it means that women authors have the subtle pressure to use their initials and surname on their book jackets, rather than their first name-surname. I can choose to do so, but they can't.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The problem is this: there is no obvious bar to men entering what is perceived to be a 'female' subject or profession, while the reverse is not true.
Nobody has thus far offered any evidence for what this bar may be, other than the fact that there is a difference in numbers between men and women. I can certainly affirm that universities are definitely not turning girls away from these subjects.
quote:
I work in a Primary school, where there are only three men on the staff, vis 20 or so women. If more men wanted to join the staff, there'd be no problem.
Now, for whatever reason, the ratio of male to female physicists is very high, and it appears that women are being put off the hard sciences at around the 14-16 age, which then multiplies the effect throughout the profession.
So boys/men are being put off primary teaching, and girls/women are being put off hard sciences. Yet one of these is a problem and the other isn't?
quote:
I'd argue that this is a cause for concern far more than men not being engaged in Primary education, which certainly is a problem, but a different one.
In both cases there's a sector of employment that is clearly - for whatever reason - weighted against people of one sex. The only difference is which sex is being excluded. So why is one so terrible, and the other not overly worrying?
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
The problem is this: there is no obvious bar to men entering what is perceived to be a 'female' subject or profession, while the reverse is not true.
Nobody has thus far offered any evidence for what this bar may be, other than the fact that there is a difference in numbers between men and women. I can certainly affirm that universities are definitely not turning girls away from these subjects.
So can I. Universities are not the problem, as several people (including the Institute of Physics) have already said. It's at A level, where the ratios for biology and chemistry are roughly 50:50, while for physics, it's 80:20. That's where it is.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I work in a Primary school, where there are only three men on the staff, vis 20 or so women. If more men wanted to join the staff, there'd be no problem.
Now, for whatever reason, the ratio of male to female physicists is very high, and it appears that women are being put off the hard sciences at around the 14-16 age, which then multiplies the effect throughout the profession.
So boys/men are being put off primary teaching, and girls/women are being put off hard sciences. Yet one of these is a problem and the other isn't?
Yes, because primary teaching is traditionally considered a low(er)-status job. Physicist is not a low-status job. There's nothing to prevent men from taking lower status jobs, but women have been prevented for a very long time from entering high status professions. This is why the lack of women physicists is a problem that needs addressing.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Yes, because primary teaching is traditionally considered a low(er)-status job. Physicist is not a low-status job. There's nothing to prevent men from taking lower status jobs, but women have been prevented for a very long time from entering high status professions. This is why the lack of women physicists is a problem that needs addressing.
There is actually still some societal pressure for men not to become primary school teachers. There is an undercurrent of assumption that a man wanting to work with young children must have ulterior motives for doing so, as primary education is seen as a caring, and so female, role.
Posted by Inger (# 15285) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Heavenly Anarchist:
I don't know f anyone else has seen this video http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9349923/Science-girl-thing-video-branded-offensive.html which was released by the European commission this year to promote women in science. It is quite shocking in it's sexism and might go some way to help explain the barriers that exist.
quote:
Originally posted by Flossymole:
Yes - that is horrible.
quote:
Michael Jennings, the EC's science spokesman, wrote on Twitter: "[The] Commission doesn't really do irony. Hope was to get young people onto [the] site. That seems to be happening!"
I hope his afterthought reflects their real thinking.
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
I've spent quite a while discussing this with both my daughters, and their message was firmly that it was peer group pressure where they were at school - certain subjects are "unfeminine". It wasn't the staff or the boys in their opinion - the attitudinal problem was primarily other young women. Of course, they would have had to get that from somewhere to start with, but even so...
You could probably say much the same about the falling numbers of boys in certain situations - the attitude that caring about your education is "girly" amounts to pretty much the same thing.
Did anyone read the comments to the Telegraph article and the video? One linked to this web site which seems to show that the EU didn't get it so wrong after all. The aim was presumably to show that you don't have to be "unfeminine" to be a scientist.
quote:
Before Viewing
13 out of 38 girls stated that they enjoy science lessons at school.
11 out of 38 girls stated that they want a career in science. Only 2 of these girls had parents in scientific occupations.
After Viewing
30 out of 38 girls had positive comments about the video.
25 out of 38 girls said that the video made them motivated to look into science as a career. This is an increase of 14 girls: from 29% to 66%!
Interestingly, the girls were generally positive about the video: it’s difficult to argue with the numbers.
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on
:
Marvin: quote:
So boys/men are being put off primary teaching, and girls/women are being put off hard sciences. Yet one of these is a problem and the other isn't?
Both are, but only one is the subject of this thread. Why not start another if you want to discuss the dearth of male primary school teachers? I'll join in if you do - the best teacher my daughter has had (so far) is male.
I suspect part of the problem is lack of role models in popular culture. I'm thinking especially of soap operas like EastEnders, which hardly ever seem to show characters bravely struggling against impossible odds to pass their GCSEs/get into university/qualify as a brain surgeon (delete as appropriate).
Posted by Anyuta (# 14692) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
With the greatest of respect, Anyuta, the fact that you didn't encourage gender stereotypes in your children doesn't mean that the tendencies you have observed were inate. Society in general constantly reinforces gender roles and norms. Even going into most toy shops you will find "girls' toys" and "boys' toys".
Yes, I do recognize this. I also know that my own children hardly represent all children everywhere, and also that anecdote is not data. I just tell that story as one example, which I happened to take note of (I really stood out for me). My children are in many ways surprisingly gender typical, even though my husband and I are rather non gender-typical in many ways.
As it happens, though, at the age of the example, my kids had minimal exposure to the world at large.. we spoke only Russian at home, and at that age they did not yet speak English (well, my daughter might have a little). TV was limited (they coudln't understand it). but as you say, there are other subtle influences. I shudder whenever I walk by those horrid pink filled isles in the toy depatment full of "girl" stuff! (previous anecdote notwithstanding, my DD is actually quite a tomboy in many ways).
OK, since you have me on the topic, I want to share another somewhat related anecdote (only slightly off topic): when she was 5 or 6 my daughter discovered Barbie-Dolls. one evening while playing with Barbie she turned to me and said "Mom, I need a Ken doll for Barbie". mentally preparing my liberal "girls don't NEED a man to be happy" lecture, I asked her "oh, really? why does she need Ken?" she looked at me as if I was an idiot (most parents are familiar with this look) and said:
"well, what if Barbie wants to have children....
who would watch them when she went to work?"
She got the Ken.
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Marvin: quote:
So boys/men are being put off primary teaching, and girls/women are being put off hard sciences. Yet one of these is a problem and the other isn't?
Both are, but only one is the subject of this thread. Why not start another if you want to discuss the dearth of male primary school teachers?
You're dodging the issue. Imagine that someone chose to start a thread on the terrible problem of women raping men. Wouldn't it be appropriate within that thread to point out that the real problem lies elsewhere? Similarly, our universities are becoming sororities at a rapid rate. And yet the problem is sexism in science?
It strikes me as much more likely that those few sciences that are still predominantly male will become a female domain simply because there aren't enough boys getting higher education at all than that the sciences will remain all male bastions. If we have a legitimate concern about wasting the talents of half our youth, that concern reasonably lies elsewhere.
Concentrating on the horrors of sexism in education is just perverse. Or so ISTM.
--Tom Clune
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Yes, because primary teaching is traditionally considered a low(er)-status job. Physicist is not a low-status job. There's nothing to prevent men from taking lower status jobs, but women have been prevented for a very long time from entering high status professions. This is why the lack of women physicists is a problem that needs addressing.
There is actually still some societal pressure for men not to become primary school teachers. There is an undercurrent of assumption that a man wanting to work with young children must have ulterior motives for doing so, as primary education is seen as a caring, and so female, role.
This is true. As I've been (and still am) the primary carer for my two kids, I'm aware that I'm bucking a general trend.
However, if they doubled the starting salary of all primary teachers, I'd expect the gender difference to be very rapidly eroded.
(Also, there's a lot less caring than you might imagine, especially in KS2... ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
)
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
This is true. As I've been (and still am) the primary carer for my two kids, I'm aware that I'm bucking a general trend.
However, if they doubled the starting salary of all primary teachers, I'd expect the gender difference to be very rapidly eroded.
(Also, there's a lot less caring than you might imagine, especially in KS2... )
I work in an all through school, so I have a fair idea! Primary teaching is already fairly well oversubscribed, I'm not sure you'd alter the gender balance without quotas at the training stage - increased salaries by that amount would make it competitive with law and medicine for female graduates as well as male.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
I'm not sure you'd alter the gender balance without quotas at the training stage - increased salaries by that amount would make it competitive with law and medicine for female graduates as well as male.
But it's the training stage we to address: certainly by (a) making primary teaching equal in worth to secondary teaching, (b) putting more subject teaching into primary schools, then the potential pool of recruits would be more evenly distributed. I think there's a certain reluctance to teach subjects which haven't been studied for a while. I'd hate to teach art (because I'm crap at it), and I know some don't like teaching either maths, or english. And hardly anyone likes teaching science. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Stereotypically, our school's dedicated science teacher is male, and his teaching assistant is, er, me.
Posted by saysay (# 6645) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Concentrating on the horrors of sexism in education is just perverse. Or so ISTM.
Depends on what you're concentrating on.
A popular theory amongst people I know is that I became horrible at math and science when I moved north and teachers (and classrooms) no longer combined visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning. My math and science teachers (mostly female) simply taught the way they learned, which was auditorily (they stood in front of the class and lectured for the entire period). As students, we had to form study groups to teach each other the material, as so many of us were incapable of learning it from the teachers the way they were teaching. My male math and science teachers could teach in the way that I could learn; however, for the most part (largely due to curriculum differences I would wager) they were reduced to teaching me things that I had already learned in elementary or middle school. There was so much peer (and teacher) pressure for women to go into math and science (even if they didn't have the necessary talents or skills) that people couldn't necessarily sort themselves out and find out what subjects and jobs they were in fact good at.
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
However, if they doubled the starting salary of all primary teachers, I'd expect the gender difference to be very rapidly eroded.
Not in the US. I, and any number of people I know who wanted to go into education were driven out of the field by the fact that the classes you had to take in order to qualify were a) so expensive and b) so mind-numbingly boring that there was simply no way to justify paying that much/going that far into debt in order to take that many classes that didn't actually teach you anything you didn't already know just so you could have a piece of paper saying you were qualified to teach in one state (but might not be ten years down the road when they changed the requirements and/or wouldn't necessarily be qualified in a different state if your life circumstances required you to move across state lines).
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
I, and any number of people I know who wanted to go into education were driven out of the field by the fact that the classes you had to take in order to qualify were a) so expensive and b) so mind-numbingly boring that there was simply no way to justify paying that much/going that far into debt in order to take that many classes that didn't actually teach you anything you didn't already know just so you could have a piece of paper saying you were qualified to teach in one state (but might not be ten years down the road when they changed the requirements and/or wouldn't necessarily be qualified in a different state if your life circumstances required you to move across state lines).
Whereas in the UK, the teaching degree (B.Ed) or the post-grad conversion (PGCE) are highly portable and don't run out.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
This is one of the stupid things, of course. Maths is hard, especially at A level, and ditto Physics. Both are highly technical subjects that require not only a decent memory but, contrary to expectations, flair and imagination.
But you could say that of English or History or Art. Why is it that girls with the aptitude to excel at academic subjects get deflected away from the sciences at this stage - which is where (IIRC, the IoP have just done a survey of this) the problem seems to start.
I am a Mathematician (well Statistician) and Female.
There is a strong cultural message (and I blame women as much if not more than men for this) that true girls are not good at mathematics. Therefore in the same way boys not being able to read can be seen as gain, so too can girls not being able to do mathematics.
That is the start, but it means fewer girls in top sets at mathematics when they start streaming. That is noted and it makes mathematics seem more boys area. The higher you get the fewer and fewer females there are around. What is also true though is those women tend to fill higher grades in the class room than the men, which suggests to me that there are men doing maths at University where the equivalent women are not. I do not think, Maths ever got as bad as Physics but I do suspect 1/3 female to 2/3 male in classes when I was at Uni.
Then there are differences between the branches of mathematics. Applied Mathematics is the most male dominated while I would say women make up about 50% of Statisticians. Pure mathematics seems to come somewhere inbetween I seem to recall (although some data is suggesting it may have been female dominated at undergraduate e.g. I can remember all female tutorials). That still leads to male dominance, the biggest section of mathematicians are applied.
Then you add career pressures on top of that, that women are also trained not to push themselves forward in the cultural search and so on.
Jengie
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
One thought that occurs. Is the prevalance of Asperger's likely to have a statistically significant effect on proportions of male and female students in maths and physics (and computer science for that matter), particularly at the higher levels? The condition is thought to be more common in men than women and does have certain links with mathematical thinking, particularly visualisation.
[ 18. October 2012, 19:52: Message edited by: Arethosemyfeet ]
Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on
:
Originally posted by Arethoemyfeet: quote:
particularly visualisation
More or less... Just occurs to me that geometricians and statisticians are often said to be different breeds...
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
I, and any number of people I know who wanted to go into education were driven out of the field by the fact that the classes you had to take in order to qualify were a) so expensive and b) so mind-numbingly boring that there was simply no way to justify paying that much/going that far into debt in order to take that many classes that didn't actually teach you anything you didn't already know just so you could have a piece of paper saying you were qualified to teach in one state (but might not be ten years down the road when they changed the requirements and/or wouldn't necessarily be qualified in a different state if your life circumstances required you to move across state lines).
Whereas in the UK, the teaching degree (B.Ed) or the post-grad conversion (PGCE) are highly portable and don't run out.
Not any more. If you don't get a job within two years of a PGCE and pass NQT status, you have to take the PGCE again.
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
:
David Anderegg in Nerds is very suspicious of a pop-culture tendency to overdiagnose Asperger's (especially borderline Asperger's). Some authors even declare that Bill Gates is an example, along with many faculty in engineering departments. This trivializes the condition and is also one more way to insult nerds: in this case, saying that they are sick.
This is an Aspergsion that neither boys nor girls who have an interest in the sciences (or any scholarly pursuit for that matter), not to mention a nation which can no longer produce enough of its own but must import them, needs right now.
What do we want in this thread, equality of opportunity or equality of numbers? Remember that college enrollment in the U.S. is almost 3/5 women now; and whenever I suggest that this is a problem, I get purrs that there's nothing to worry about, everything is o.k., a guy can do just fine without a college education, more boys are going to college than ever before, etc. If with this head start we still have a shortage of women in the sciences, there must be a shortage of men in many other fields, right?
Ergo, if more girls are becoming scientists than ever before, there must be nothing to worry about.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But the fact that i mention these shows how rare they are.
Please tell me your job involves cremating only physicists. Because that is an awesome - if unlikely - profession.
Not a lot of money to be made in that!
Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I accept everything that's been said about the level of dedication, commitment, and the sheer quantity of work that's involved in a science career - but is it really much more than, for instance, a senior NHS manager (of which many are women) or a priest in a large, busy parish?
If those roles involve full 9-5 days with additional work in the early morning or into the late evening, extra at the weekend, foreign conferences and additional administrative roles - none of these paid any extra whatsoever - then no. Otherwise yes.
Senior NHS staff - yes to all of those, except the foreign conferences (NHS doesn't usually have the money to send staff anywhere abroad - London at inconvenient times would be more usual.)
Certainly it is routine for senior managers to come in early, leave late, discover they are the clinical lead for this, and the project lead for the latest quality initiative and a modern matron, and inspected to do this disciplinary investigation and see patients without extra renumeration or full time dedicated admin support.
I am not that senior and still end up being in work at 7am and going in on weekends or whatever. Managers also have to do on call rotations etc.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
David Anderegg in Nerds is very suspicious of a pop-culture tendency to overdiagnose Asperger's (especially borderline Asperger's). Some authors even declare that Bill Gates is an example, along with many faculty in engineering departments. This trivializes the condition and is also one more way to insult nerds: in this case, saying that they are sick.
My point of view, as someone with Asperger's, is that it's no more an illness than left handedness is.
Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
If those roles involve full 9-5 days with additional work in the early morning or into the late evening, extra at the weekend, foreign conferences and additional administrative roles - none of these paid any extra whatsoever - then no. Otherwise yes. [/QUOTE]
Doens't sound too different from the work of a public librarian, frankly...
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
But the fact that i mention these shows how rare they are.
Or perhaps how predictable you are...
--Tom Clune
How so? I don't understand.
Who can predict who will be elected churchwarden or who will die?
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Garasu:
Originally posted by Arethoemyfeet: quote:
particularly visualisation
More or less... Just occurs to me that geometricians and statisticians are often said to be different breeds...
I refute that, I have a brain that is rather good at geometry, and I am a statistician by training. As you can't be both breeds, youu have a problem. Nor am I the only one to be able to work in either tradition.
Actually statistics is a weird form of geometry in almost infinite dimensions with different gravitational pulls in differing parts of the field are distributed according to a mathematical function that has specific properties. The question is usually how best to map this into as few dimensions as possible.
By the way I presume by geometry you mean what pure mathematicians mean by it! These people do not go in for sines and cosines and such but exactly the sorts of spaces described above.
they both happen to be areas with higher proportions of women than say fluid dynamics did in my undergraduate degree, so approximately solving nonlinear differential equations efficiently!
Jengie
[ 18. October 2012, 20:33: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I accept everything that's been said about the level of dedication, commitment, and the sheer quantity of work that's involved in a science career - but is it really much more than, for instance, a senior NHS manager (of which many are women) or a priest in a large, busy parish?
My wife is in an academic sciency-type career, and yes, the hours are long. She's just gone back to work part-time after maternity leave and she's already twice got back home only after our daughter's gone to bed. She can do this because her husband i.e. me is able to act as primary carer.
A) I find it plausible that peer pressure and cultural expectations of women do hold many women back. (My wife is largely unaffected by cultural expectations - she owns no makeup. I think this may not be a coincidence.)
B) A second consideration is childcare responsibilities. An academic career has a fairly steep ladder and children generally arrive as you're on a crucial few rungs. Where childcare devolves onto one gender as a rule, that gender then gets held back at a crucial stage. This reinforces A).
I don't know about senior NHS management; my perception rightly or wrongly is that the career structure in the CofE is much flatter. (There's a problem with the organisation in that it explicitly forbids women from taking the top few rungs. But because that's quite explicit, anyone put off knows why they're being put off.)
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on
:
The biggest problem IME is conferences and any other meetings that require you to travel away from home. If your Other Half is not available to look after the children and you don't have any grandparents/aunts/uncles/friends handy, you just can't go.
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
:
I'm not 100% convinced about the childcare issues that some have mentioned. If anyone - female or male - freely wishes to take a career break or change their working practices in order to accommodate childcare, that's up to them. I also accept that a science academic taking a career break runs the risk of getting out of date very quickly. But if anyone's still using childcare as an excuse not to promote women to senior posts, then I think that's utterly unacceptable. Please, someone, tell me that science faculties have moved on from the days when the man went out to hunt the mammoth while the little lady stayed home in the cave with the kids.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
But if anyone's still using childcare as an excuse not to promote women to senior posts, then I think that's utterly unacceptable.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that. All the relevant posts on this thread seem to be suggesting that where the inherent demands of the job are incompatible with childcare, women generally choose the childcare option.
I certainly wouldn't want to do any job that would prevent me from spending any meaningful time with my family. I've got better things to do with my life than be welded to a workstation for all the hours God sends. And if fewer men than women agree with that position, what's the problem?
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
:
But I think we've established that being a physicist, though demanding, is no more demanding than any number of other jobs that women do without claiming that childcare gets in the way of their doing them. So why would childcare be a particular consideration in a science career?
Posted by Dinghy Sailor (# 8507) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
So why would childcare be a particular consideration in a science career?
There's the near-necessity to hop around from university to university on a series of 1-2 year postdoc contracts, with an expectation that you'll spend at least some of that time abroad. Junior academics are the new transients and are expected to be totally care-free as regards their own personal lives. Once you've got tenure, that's great. Before then, you may as well be Tom Joad, which is hardly compatible with a family life or any connection to a local area.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
:
I have no idea. Maybe it's to do with the relative ages of the people in those jobs. Maybe it's all a perception with no basis in reality. Maybe it's due to a sinister cabal of evil misogynist particle physicists who want to keep their grubby little hands on the reins of power. I don't know.
But can I ask one question, please? Why is it that when there are jobs that are majority-female it's explained away as being because men don't want to do them, but when there are jobs that are majority-male the idea that it may simply be because women don't want to do them isn't good enough?
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on
:
quote:
I certainly wouldn't want to do any job that would prevent me from spending any meaningful time with my family. I've got better things to do with my life than be welded to a workstation for all the hours God sends. And if fewer men than women agree with that position, what's the problem?
The childcare problem has two sides to it.
First, any family that includes children must have someone available at all times to look after them. If you are rich enough you can pay for a nanny, but leaving your children unattended or taking them everywhere with you is not an option.
Secondly, although children have two parents there is still an expectation that mothers will be the primary carer and far greater pressure on women than on men to put the needs of their children before their other responsibilities.
And the problem is that the years when junior academics are busy writing research papers and attending conferences in a (possibly futile) attempt to become senior academics with job security, professorships etc. are also the years of greatest fertility for women. So unless you postpone having children until your late 30s or early 40s (and risk not being able to have any at all) you have to choose.
And I don't think you quite appreciate the other side of the problem. Most of the people who go into academic research actually enjoy their jobs. Some of them stay in the lab slaving till all hours because they are really interested in finding things out. It's not a choice between something that is boring but necessary and something that you really want to do. It's a choice between two things that are very important to you.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
David Anderegg in Nerds is very suspicious of a pop-culture tendency to overdiagnose Asperger's (especially borderline Asperger's). Some authors even declare that Bill Gates is an example, along with many faculty in engineering departments. This trivializes the condition and is also one more way to insult nerds: in this case, saying that they are sick.
My point of view, as someone with Asperger's, is that it's no more an illness than left handedness is.
Indeed. I'm borderline enough that I could well fall into the "overdiagnosis" category if (a) I had an official confirmed diagnosis and (b) we drew an arbitrary line somewhat further along the spectrum than where I stand. But I never feel that it insulted me; "nerd" and "geek" were insults, at least when I was younger, but learning about Aspergers and ASDs actually said to me "there's nothing wrong; you're differently wired and think differently - and that lets you do things other people can't esaily do*, at the price of making you find other things that they can do** rather difficult."
*understand complex computer systems, appreciate comparative linguistics, see words in car number plates.
**sports, idle chit-chat, reading celebrity magazines.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
What do we want in this thread, equality of opportunity or equality of numbers?
That's the question of course. But underneath it is the deeper question of the way in which prevailing attitudes may work against equality of opportunity.
It's the old Civil Rights issue of positive discrimination, but in a different setting. As a permanent policy, forcing equality of numbers is not defensible. As a temporary incentive to encourage changes in unhelpful attitudes, it has some point.
I'm generally in favour of a meritocratic approach to selection. Distorting that in pursuit of some restoration of justice produces casualties as well. There's a cost to other individuals when we discriminate positively. I see the point, but I'm not comfortable with that cost. Favouritism toward the previously disadvantaged is still favouritism.
[ 19. October 2012, 11:50: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
But I think we've established that being a physicist, though demanding, is no more demanding than any number of other jobs that women do without claiming that childcare gets in the way of their doing them. So why would childcare be a particular consideration in a science career?
The academic system is based on rewarding past research performance. If you've taken any kind of break then you'll almost inevitably be behind of other candidates.
It doesn't have to be like this, but in my experience it is a rare academic department who will take someone with 'insufficient' research performance because they've had children. In fact there is a direct correlation between your age and your research output. If you are a certain age and you've not been producing sufficient research output, that is inevitably going to affect your chances of progressing in academia.
Of course, it depends on the field, how many qualified candidates there are, the university and so on. But I've known unfilled academic posts take several rounds of candidates because they've all had insufficient research on their CVs. The department has to consider the effect of the overall research assessment on their funding, if you're not 'good enough', it'll drag everyone else down.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I have no idea. Maybe it's to do with the relative ages of the people in those jobs. Maybe it's all a perception with no basis in reality. Maybe it's due to a sinister cabal of evil misogynist particle physicists who want to keep their grubby little hands on the reins of power. I don't know.
But can I ask one question, please? Why is it that when there are jobs that are majority-female it's explained away as being because men don't want to do them, but when there are jobs that are majority-male the idea that it may simply be because women don't want to do them isn't good enough?
Because there's plenty of evidence, historical and contemporary, of women of equal qualifications being discriminated against in consideration for high status, high paying jobs, or in gaining access to the preparation needed to take them. The objection isn't simply that their representation in those jobs doesn't match their proportion of the population; when candidates who manifestly do want those positions are discriminated against there's a real problem, regardless of whether or not women would tend to make different choices than men in the absence of discrimination.
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
But can I ask one question, please? Why is it that when there are jobs that are majority-female it's explained away as being because men don't want to do them, but when there are jobs that are majority-male the idea that it may simply be because women don't want to do them isn't good enough?
Because there's plenty of evidence, historical and contemporary, of women of equal qualifications being discriminated against in consideration for high status, high paying jobs, or in gaining access to the preparation needed to take them.
The things that I have seen appear to suggest that people tend to choose other people that they perceive to be like them when filling prestige positions. If that is so (and it rings true to me, FWIW), then the problem is not one of anti-women bias but diversity aversion.
Thus, for example, when we recognize that the majority of new physicians in the US are women, and have been for the last couple of decades, we recognize that there is a serious problem of gender bias that will accelerate the gender unfairness in that desirable field. Clearly, as you are undoubtedly not some political hack who has no principles, you will agree with me that we need to take affirmative steps to insure more men are able to enter med schools and succeed in their chosen field.
--Tom Clune
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
"nerd" and "geek" were insults, at least when I was younger,
That says it all. As comforting as the truth may be to grasp in our relative senescence, it's at an early age that most of the damage is done. And to kids, being or becoming a nerd is still a fate worse than death, most importantly because nerds have no sex appeal. You don't want to be seen studying too hard or taking a strong interest in anything unusual.
This attitude is very deep-seated in America. Washington Irving has a lot to answer for with his Legend of Sleepy Hollow.. If I were a teacher, I'd be tempted to throw that story out of the school library, opponent of censorship though I am, and would strongly protest ever assigning it for reading to anyone under 16. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other relatively intellectual people are not free from blame either, in proposing that the only things worth studying are those of practical value befitting a man of action.
I sense that "geek" is beginning to undergo amelioration. Hardly anybody yet actually wants to be one, but at least we acknowledge that it can be mighty useful to know one. And Harry Potter has been a very good influence. I can't recall the last time we had a young bespectacled hero. (Certainly not Superman: he put on his glasses when he was pretending to be everyhing that Superman wasn't.) But we have a long way to go.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Similarly, our universities are becoming sororities at a rapid rate.
That's inevitable if there are equal opportunities for men and women to get into them, if entry is competitive, and if most students are recruited at age 17 or 18. (They join at 18 or 19 but the exams they pass to get in are taken earlier). Teenage girls are simply on average, with lots of exceptions, both cleverer and harder working than boys. Its biology, girls mature earlier. A 12-year-old girl is typically at the same stage of development as a 14-year-old boy. The men usually catch up by late teens but they are often still behind at just the time in their lives when they start taking public exams.
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Teenage girls are simply on average, with lots of exceptions, both cleverer and harder working than boys.
Bull.
I wasn't aware that you were a believer in IQ tests. How old fashioned. If boys are dumber on average at this age, it is because of educational and environmental influences. It's unnecessary and it's tragic.
I use to have considerable confidence that the Islamic world's suppression of women's talents (whatever the cause of that custom) constitutes a grave weakness that puts them at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis the west. In short, they're not firing on all cylinders. But sometimes we seem perfectly content to make the same mistake in the other direction.
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
But sometimes we seem perfectly content to make the same mistake in the other direction.
Yes we do. But nobody cares, because it only counts as sexism when females are the ones being discriminated against.
Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on
:
I am a woman physicist who worked as a tenured university lecturer in physics for 10 years, left and eventually became a manager in the NHS, took early retirement from the NHS and am now back teaching part-time in a different university physics department.
The first thing I noticed on my return to physics was how many more women there are in the department than when I left. This is at all levels except technical support staff. There are now about 25% women undergraduates, about 12% women postgrads, an appreciable proportion of women lecturers and a couple of women professors. All these proportions are significantly higher than they were 14 years ago. So, as previous posts have said, women are steadily working their way into academic physics (at least in the UK) but because of the long training time and the smaller numbers who were around in the past the increase is taking time to work through the system.
Having said that, and having experienced working in a different environment, I have to say that if a young person (of either sex) asked me for advice about aiming to become an academic physicist I would advise them against it in the strongest possible terms. In my opinion the job has become impossible and the pressures go on and on increasing. My PhD supervisor's peer group hit the bottle and dropped dead from heart-attacks. My own peer group who remained in academic life popped the pills, have nervous breakdowns and drop dead from heart-attacks. The younger generation are heading for early burn-out, early heart-attacks, nervous breakdowns or maybe something worse. I don't know whether this applies to other academic disciplines, I'm just talking about physicists here.
However, if a young person were to ask me for advice about studying physics I would immediately say - go for it! It's a wonderful, fascinating subject, and having a degree in physics opens the door to a whole range of wonderful, fascinating careers. My impression is that young women in their early twenties tend to make more reasoned, thoughtful career decisions than young men, so my prediction is that the increased numbers of women taking degrees in physics (which is a great thing to see) may not feed through into a higher number of women in "professional science". Most young women will choose to use their degrees to enter other careers and will do extremely well in them. Frankly, "professional" science is no longer a good career. It doesn't pay well, the prospects are poor and the working conditions are terrible.
Good luck to them. I would do the same thing in their place.
Posted by Angloid (# 159) on
:
It just occurs to me that if opportunities for women scientists had been better sixty years or so ago, we might have been spared a certain woman Prime Minister.
Posted by Anselmina (# 3032) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Even before women could become priests in the CoE women made up a large part of the church in terms of volunteers, deacons, children's workers etc. Even in say, the RCC, a man may be in charge but it's women who do the legwork and keep the church going.
Quite, and not just in the CoE. In The Church Impotent, Leon Podles discusses this fact at considerable length. Clergymen may have the titles and be formally on the throne, but then there are the powers behind the throne... AKA balance.
Any such balance is now threatened.
That's like saying that because the production line is peopled by women, it doesn't matter if it's all men in the boardroom. Doing the leg-work, isn't the same thing as 'being the power' behind anything. It just means the 'powers-that-be' have access to the leg-workers they need to implement their decisions.
Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
That's like saying that because the production line is peopled by women, it doesn't matter if it's all men in the boardroom. Doing the leg-work, isn't the same thing as 'being the power' behind anything. It just means the 'powers-that-be' have access to the leg-workers they need to implement their decisions.
Yes, but because the women "leg workers" were there, waiting, some of them could quickly move into the power positions when these became available to them.
Same thing in the NHS. The reason that so many NHS managers are women is simply that hospitals have always been run by nurses (mainly women) while doctors (mainly men) swanned in and out being doctors. Matron ran the ward, and when management positions opened up she got in there are ran the whole shebang.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
I wasn't aware that you were a believer in IQ tests. How old fashioned.
Who mentioned IQ tests?
Have you ever met any teenagers? Or even women?
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
When my sisters studied physics, it was not possible to do so to exam level at their grammar school so they were taxi'd up the boys' version to study there. (My school had no such arrangement, so O level Physics with Chemistry was the highest option available.) They both reported that the boys of the same age did not have the same work attitude and were rather silly.
As ken said about maturity, that difference was what was evident.
Posted by Antisocial Alto (# 13810) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Similarly, our universities are becoming sororities at a rapid rate.
That's inevitable if there are equal opportunities for men and women to get into them, if entry is competitive, and if most students are recruited at age 17 or 18.
Actually in the US, there are not equal opportunities, especially at private colleges: men are already receiving unofficial affirmative action from admissions offices. At some schools they are struggling to maintain the gender ratio even as low as 60/40 women/men. See here and here (PDF).
There are also some reports that Asian-Americans are discriminated against by admissions officers, for the same reason: colleges are trying to maintain a somewhat "balanced" campus with regard to race and gender, and if they admitted based only on test scores and extracurriculars there would be a disproportionately high number of Asians.
Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:
There are also some reports that Asian-Americans are discriminated against by admissions officers, for the same reason: colleges are trying to maintain a somewhat "balanced" campus with regard to race and gender, and if they admitted based only on test scores and extracurriculars there would be a disproportionately high number of Asians.
I seem to remember something similar happening in UK medical schools, maybe about 20 years ago. The schools were operating an unofficial quota to limit the number of well-qualified Asian women entrants. I can't remember exactly when it was, but London medical schools were involved and they were made to stop doing it.
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Similarly, our universities are becoming sororities at a rapid rate.
That's inevitable if there are equal opportunities for men and women to get into them, if entry is competitive, and if most students are recruited at age 17 or 18.
Actually in the US, there are not equal opportunities, especially at private colleges: men are already receiving unofficial affirmative action from admissions offices. At some schools they are struggling to maintain the gender ratio even as low as 60/40 women/men. See here and here (PDF).
There are also some reports that Asian-Americans are discriminated against by admissions officers, for the same reason: colleges are trying to maintain a somewhat "balanced" campus with regard to race and gender, and if they admitted based only on test scores and extracurriculars there would be a disproportionately high number of Asians.
And, at technical colleges, women are given preferential treatment by admissions offices over men. There is nothing wrong with this to my mind. The notion that it's all about me is the pathology of our culture. Schools are trying to achieve a diverse "ecosystem." A school that, e.g., did not have any foreign students, would be a poor place to go to school. An Ivy League school that didn't expose their students to old money would no longer be special in its way, etc. It's a shame that those pigs on the SCOTUS can't get that through their thick ideological skulls.
--Tom Clune
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Antisocial Alto:
.... men are already receiving unofficial affirmative action from admissions offices.
That used to happen here until the 1970s when it became illegal. The schools in my home town had more boys than girls doing A-levels, (exams taken at the age of 17 or 18 that are used for university entrance among other things) Girls had to do better at school to get admitted to a course than boys did.
The university college I went to had equal numbers of men and women in my year. They achieved this by demanding higher A-level results from women applicants. The Sex Discrimination Act came in to force during my first year (now you all know how old I am!) and the college authorities understood it to mean that they had to offer the same conditions to both men and women. So from the year below me there were slighltly more women than men, because women got better A-level results. Its nothing new.
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
The Sex Discrimination Act came in to force during my first year (now you all know how old I am!)
Sorry, those of us on this side of the pond need more clues. Was that part of the Magna Carta?
--Tom Clune
Posted by saysay (# 6645) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
They both reported that the boys of the same age did not have the same work attitude and were rather silly.
As ken said about maturity, that difference was what was evident.
Hmm. I would have said that the girls I went to school with were developmentally ahead in certain ways (such as social maturity), but mostly that they had a much greater tolerance for pointless 'busy work' than the boys did. It was sometimes hard to get the boys to focus on something other than attempting to get me (and other girls) to have sex with them, but sometimes that was because they simply knew the material that was being taught already. If a large part of your assessment as a student is tied to your ability to work in academic teams, girls tend to fare better.
But then the US can be crazy, what with investigating people for practicing math without a license, and creating nonesense test questions...
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
That's like saying that because the production line is peopled by women, it doesn't matter if it's all men in the boardroom.
This isn't a very good analogy. I wouldn't take a production line job out of the love of it, would you? Those workers are there because they basically have little alternative, and their bosses know it. They don't really need to listen, or can think that they don't. (Nevertheless, Japanese experience shows that management would be smart to listen to the ideas of those on the production line. This is one difference that accounts for Toyota's cleaning GM's clock.)
In the church, however, we have a few paid people and lots of volunteers/payers. I daresay that any clergyman, especially in Protestantism, who runs roughshod over those volunteers/payers with whom he spends most of his time will run the place into the ground.
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
I wasn't aware that you were a believer in IQ tests. How old fashioned.
Who mentioned IQ tests?
When you declare that someone is just inherently, inexorably cleverer than someone else, you'll have to explain in some detail how that isn't talking about IQ with a euphemism.
All hell broke loose when the authors of The Bell Curve tried to show that black people were less clever (if you will) than the general American population by a whole standard deviation. And not even they, if I recall, claimed that the situation was due to biology or heredity.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
But then the US can be crazy, what with investigating people for practicing math without a license...
Hmm... If you follow that through it turns out that one engineer reported someone to the board of a professional body for engineers, and they decided to do nothing about it. And if they had decided to do somethign about it all they would have done is write a letter.!
Posted by saysay (# 6645) on
:
Your point being....?
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
When you declare that someone is just inherently, inexorably cleverer than someone else
Where the hell did I write anything like that? Have you been reading someone else's posting and mistaking them for mine?
quote:
you'll have to explain in some detail how that isn't talking about IQ with a euphemism.
Why? Why should I? I never brought it up, you did. You explain it if you want.
Which of the things I do claim are you denying?
- that on average, with lots of exceptions, girls tend to mature phsyically and mentally about one or two years faster than boys?
- that the greatest difference is in the early teens around the time of puberty?
- that boys typically catch up in their late teens or early twenties?
- that girls on average get better exam results than boys?
- that here in Britain we used to demand better exam results to get into university from girls than from boys up to the 1970s but that this is now illegal?
- that these are some of the reasons why the number of women in higher education has risen (and might still be rising) faster than the number of men?
quote:
All hell broke loose when the authors of The Bell Curve tried to show that black people were less clever (if you will) than the general American population by a whole standard deviation.
And they were wrong on that, just as you are wrong on this.
quote:
And not even they, if I recall, claimed that the situation was due to biology or heredity.
Yes, they certainly did. I've got the book. Its crap. And their absurd and unscientific defence of their position revealed their ignorance of how heredity works.
Posted by ken (# 2460) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
Your point being....?
The anecdote that was being used as an example of how bad things are in the USA isn't really anything very serious.
(The one about the exams is serious, but then public exams for secondary school age kids are are broken pretty much everywhere so its hardly news)
Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on
:
Ken-- quoting you:
"Teenage girls are simply on average, with lots of exceptions, both cleverer and harder working than boys. Its biology"
I'll grant you that they are ahead in physical maturation. But you haven't explained any inherent connection between physical maturation and either intelligence or industriousness. I claim that the latter differences are environmental.
Posted by saysay (# 6645) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
The anecdote that was being used as an example of how bad things are in the USA isn't really anything very serious.
Eh. I still say that the fact that he was investigated (even if someone involved had the common sense not to charge him with a misdemeanor) is evidence that my country and the people in it are frequently just crazy.
I don't know what your curriculum is like on that side of the pond, but we're not necessarily teaching math or writing or reading any more even though those are the subjects tested in the high stakes testing evaluation. The people who are learning what they need to prepare them for a career in just about anything are (for the most part) people whose parents can afford to send them to private schools, tutors, and nerd camp.
Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
"Teenage girls are simply on average, with lots of exceptions, both cleverer and harder working than boys. Its biology"
Can't say what the word means to anyone else, but I don't think of "clever" as specifically referring to IQ. More like street smarts, ability to figure out how to get what you want by figuring out the "system," what will get approval from someone who can give what you want.
Hi IQ often correlates with lack of street smarts, lack of cleverness, the mind off in the clouds of academic pursuits.
Takes some maturity to start developing street smarts. Girls mature a couple years ahead of boys.
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
But can I ask one question, please? Why is it that when there are jobs that are majority-female it's explained away as being because men don't want to do them, but when there are jobs that are majority-male the idea that it may simply be because women don't want to do them isn't good enough?
Because there's plenty of evidence, historical and contemporary, of women of equal qualifications being discriminated against in consideration for high status, high paying jobs, or in gaining access to the preparation needed to take them.
The things that I have seen appear to suggest that people tend to choose other people that they perceive to be like them when filling prestige positions. If that is so (and it rings true to me, FWIW), then the problem is not one of anti-women bias but diversity aversion.
I agree that this can be a problem, though it is not always necessarily the problem. For example: Women were not admitted as undergraduates to Yale University until 1969; their exclusion up to that time was policy, not some unconscious tendency.
quote:
Thus, for example, when we recognize that the majority of new physicians in the US are women, and have been for the last couple of decades, we recognize that there is a serious problem of gender bias that will accelerate the gender unfairness in that desirable field. Clearly, as you are undoubtedly not some political hack who has no principles, you will agree with me that we need to take affirmative steps to insure more men are able to enter med schools and succeed in their chosen field.
--Tom Clune
What I perceive to be the sarcastic tone of your comment suggests to me that you will not be surprised to hear that, in fact, I do not agree with you.
As I noted before, I don't think a difference between the gender representation in a profession and that in the wider population is necessarily a sign of problematic gender bias.
But as it happens your feigned concern is moot, because as far as I can tell this:
quote:
the majority of new physicians in the US are women, and have been for the last couple of decades
is simply false. At no time in the last 30 years (class of 82-83 to class of 10-11) has the number of women exceeded that of men in US medical school graduating classes. In 82-83 women accounted for 27%; over the last 10 years they've averaged 47.5%.
Posted by A.Pilgrim (# 15044) on
:
This thread has move on a bit since I started composing this post, but one of the topics covered earlier was the choice of subjects for study at secondary school (that’s UK terminology – I guess the US equivalent is high school).
When discussing the male/female imbalance in participation in physical science subjects, there appears to be an unquestioned assumption – namely that the innate abilities of males and females are equal, therefore any inequality is caused by repressive social conditioning. But where is the evidence for this assumed equality of innate ability? AFAIK there isn’t any, and therefore to impose corrective policies on the basis of an unproven assumption seems potentially damaging in itself. As saysay reported:
quote:
There was so much peer (and teacher) pressure for women to go into math and science (even if they didn't have the necessary talents or skills) that people couldn't necessarily sort themselves out and find out what subjects and jobs they were in fact good at.
The heart of the problem at this age is that two developmental stages are occurring at the same time in mid-teens: the choice of academic subjects to study leading to future career options; and the development of adult gender-identity of being a ‘real man’ or a ‘real woman’. At this developmental stage, the sense of gender identity is insecure, and therefore the imposition of gender stereotypes by the peer group is used as a way of bolstering that insecurity. And this influences subjects chosen for study at school, then at college/university. (A study has shown that the mid-teens is the age at which attitudes of gender stereotyping are greatest, but working from memory I regret that I can’t give precise details. And if anyone wants to point out that gender stereotyping can be seen in older people as well, yes, western society is so awful at producing mature adults that immature attitudes can be seen in people of all ages.)
Several shipmates have reported the effect of peer pressure in previous posts:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
... At that age wanting to do what is expected by your peers is a strong urge. [Typo corrected]
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
... It's just that I've spent quite a while discussing this with both my daughters, and their message was firmly that it was peer group pressure where they were at school - certain subjects are "unfeminine". It wasn't the staff or the boys in their opinion - the attitudinal problem was primarily other young women. ...
quote:
Originally posted by Anyuta:
... Some of it self-generated (boys for whatever reason don't want to be associated with "girly" things... education is becoming a girly thing.. hence boys are less interested in academics). ...
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
... There is a strong cultural message (and I blame women as much if not more than men for this) that true girls are not good at mathematics. Therefore in the same way boys not being able to read can be seen as gain, so too can girls not being able to do mathematics. ...
The situation is immensely complex, dealing as it does with human motivation and psychology, and before other shipmates pick holes in this basic outline, I am already aware of its inadequacies, but a more accurate analysis of the subject would be umpteen times longer. For example, in the quote above from saysay, the peer pressure was in favour of women going into maths and science. Perhaps the peer attitude was derived from social conditioning of imposing ‘positive’ discrimination?
I don’t have a solution to propose, but I’d like to say that I am entirely in agreement with Anyuta’s first post, especially when she wrote: “We need to try to remove any barriers that may exist for ANY capable and motivated individual in excelling in any field.” [Typo corrected] But before we try to do that, we need to understand the whole extent of innate emotional and psychological developmental needs that all people have in growing up from childhood to mature adulthood. Any intervention that fails to take account of these will compound the problem, not solve it.
Angus
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on
:
There's another rumbling issue with education and gender differences in the UK. Research is showing how far boys are falling behind girls in literacy which means girls are more successful later on:
quote:
This new pattern of access and achievement has also been the result of boys' failure to improve their performance at the same rate of girls, from very young ages. A few studies have tracked boys' and girls' progress through primary or through secondary schools indicating that girls make better progress than boys in reading, mathematics, and verbal and non verbal reasoning (Arnot et al, 1998). Data collected from national assessments at the age of 7 demonstrate that girls get off to a better start at reading than boys and that the lead they establish in English is maintained at 11 and at age 14 (ibid). A sizeable gap between boys and girls in reading and English is sustained throughout compulsory schooling. By 2000, approximately 15% more girls than boys obtained high grades in English examinations at 16 (DfEE, 2000). The fact that boys have not reduced this female 'advantage' in language related subjects is one of the principal reasons why they have lost overall ground in terms of school qualifications in comparison with girls.
from the UNESCO Summary Trends in Education (word document)
and from the National Literacy Trust's Boys Reading Commission 2012 (pdf)
quote:
Girls outperform boys on all National Curriculum reading tests. At age seven, the gap between boys and girls reaching the expected level in reading is 7 percentage points. At age 11 the gap widens slightly to 8 percentage points (for reading), increasing further to 12 percentage points at age 14 (for English). At GCSE level, the gap between boys and girls achieving A* to C in English GCSE is 14 percentage points.
We have failed girls in the past, but currently we are failing to teach and support boys adequately.
[ 20. October 2012, 10:47: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by A.Pilgrim:
I don’t have a solution to propose, but I’d like to say that I am entirely in agreement with Anyuta’s first post, especially when she wrote: “We need to try to remove any barriers that may exist for ANY capable and motivated individual in excelling in any field.” [Typo corrected] But before we try to do that, we need to understand the whole extent of innate emotional and psychological developmental needs that all people have in growing up from childhood to mature adulthood.
So after we've won our Nobel Prize for achieving an understanding of all that, then we can think about removing barriers?
Cool! (But wait, you protest, there's a flaw in our plan - there isn't a Nobel Prize for Psychology! I say: No problem! After they see what we've done - completely unraveling the mysteries of human nature and stuff - they'll be so overawed that they'll have no choice but to make one up just for us. But it will be the last one, too - because psychology will pretty much be done at that point.)
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
At no time in the last 30 years (class of 82-83 to class of 10-11) has the number of women exceeded that of men in US medical school graduating classes. In 82-83 women accounted for 27%; over the last 10 years they've averaged 47.5%.
I am surprised. I had heard at various times that this was not true. Live and (on occasion) learn.
--Tom Clune
Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on
:
I wouldn't have been surprised to find that women had outnumbered men among med school graduates in the last few years, but I was pretty sure that would be a very recent phenomenon at best.
Poking around on the website of the Association of American Medical Colleges, it appears that for the last 10 years, the gender balance has been nearly 50-50 for applicants, acceptees, matriculants, and graduates.
According to the AMA, the percentage of women physicians in the US has steadily increased over time as the male-dominated older cohorts are replaced:
1970 - 7%
1980 - 12%
1990 - 17%
2002 - 25%
2012 - 31%
This is a pretty big (if very gradual) shift. I think it may be useful to keep in mind when considering suggestions that gender distribution in some field (like the physical sciences) may be ascribed to simple preference or innate ability; while I wouldn't dismiss that a priori, I'd note that a lot of people back in the 70's said such things about medicine too.
Posted by Anyuta (# 14692) on
:
I think that to some extent our education system has actually been shifting to favor girls learning styles over boys learning styles in recent years. it's not deliberate (I don't think) and of course not all girls/boys have identical learning styles. But I think in response to the desire to eliminate some anti girl bias in some subjects, the system may have swung a bit too far in the opposite direction, and may need to re-adjust again.
another anecdote, if I may:
My son was born with an inate ability to do math in his head, without even knowing he was doing math. he could add/subtract even multiply and divide instantly at a very early age.
and then his school decided to switch to a curriculum called "everyday math". This sytem was intended to help those who had trouble with "number sense". although it wasn't stated specifically, but my impression was that this meant primari;y girls. However, this was in I belive 3rd grade.. when girls generally do well in math. but be that as it may...
instead of teaching using the systematic approach that has been used for a very long time (standard algorithms for long division and so forth), this system presented material in a way which as, to my son, completely incomprehensible. he would be crying while doing homework. I could see why.. I coudln't figure out what the heck they wanted him to do, either. when I finally told him "I don't know what they want, but here is how I was taught to do this, he immediately understood, and said "why don't they teach it that way in the first place? it's so obvious this way!" The school system eventually gave up on this system, but the damage was done.. my son is STILL catching up to himself in math (he's a sophmore in HS now, taking geometry).
I'm sure this same system would have worked wonderfully for my math-phobic DD.
My DD learned to write letters before she knew what they were. she could recognise and copy them at age I think 2 or 3. I never worried about her mastering the actual physical act of writing, and focused instead on reading, word recognition, etc. I thought this was fairly normal, and didn't give it much thought.
my son (who is 6 years younger than his sister), had a LOT of trouble with the physical act of writing. I didn't realize that the school never actually TAUGHT that skills. they just expected kids to know how to do it. and then kids like my son who could not were pushed even further behind by the fact that they were expected to learn this at the same time as they learned letter recognition and spelling. I had never thought about it before this, but it would make so much more sense to separate these skills... so that kids aren't learning how to physically make a letter at the same time as they are learning what the letter actually is. when I was a kid we learned the physical act of writing as a separate skill.. drawing circles and line, learning how to hold a pencil etc. before actually trying to learn how to form letters.
Anyhow, I share this to show that these are two areas where, in my oppinion, a system which used to favor the way boys learn (in general) has shifted to a system which seems to favor the way girls learn (in general). What I would like to see is a system which doesn't specifically favor either, but which combines both, and allows those kids (male or female) who are analytical and learn better with an approach which features application of standard algorithms, and a step by step approach learn that way, and those who do better with an explanatory, verbally intense, "touchy feely" appraoch to math and assumes a higher verbal/writing ability to learn their way. it's not strictly a girl/boy divide, of course but overall I think that this is how it falls out. we need to figure out how to teach both types of learners (and I think i'm over-simplifying when I divide it into only two.. I think it's really a lot more than that). we keep jumping from one "magic button" one size fits all solution to another, instead of trying to combine them into a suite of learning systems which reach the broadest spectrum of kids.
All that being said, my so is actually a better student than my DD... she tended not to bother to do assignments because they were "stupid" or just boring, whereas he tends to just do what needs to be done. DD is doing great now (senior in college), but it took a long time to get to this point. Bottom line.. all the things I describe above while frustrating, didn't significantly alter my kids ability to succeed. both managed to work around the difficulties. so this is not something which is HUGE deal, and kids of different personalities/learning styles/strengths etc are not so hindered that they can't break free. individual personality and intelligence are much stronger factors determining academic success, I think, than the curriculum style. it's A factor, but not THE factor, if you know what I mean.
Posted by Anselmina (# 3032) on
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Alogon, I think you've moved on from your original point. Remember this?
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Even before women could become priests in the CoE women made up a large part of the church in terms of volunteers, deacons, children's workers etc. Even in say, the RCC, a man may be in charge but it's women who do the legwork and keep the church going.
Quite, and not just in the CoE. In The Church Impotent, Leon Podles discusses this fact at considerable length. Clergymen may have the titles and be formally on the throne, but then there are the powers behind the throne... AKA balance.
Any such balance is now threatened.
Your point appears to be that in the days when women did not have a choice but to be the leg-workers - in the case of the church - and men as a matter of course held the 'titles', women were still the 'powers behind the throne'. You even imply that now since women have had the choice, this 'balance' as you call it, is under threat.
My analogy, I hoped, showed that that was basically untrue. That it was not balanced then, and that the leg-workers were not powerful in the same, or in an equivalent, way that the people with 'titles' were powerful. Just because the Church institution depended on the cooperation of capable women to actually run smoothly - many of whom I'm sure thoroughly enjoyed their work - didn't mean that there was a balanced exercise of power within that institution.
Chamois, yes that's a good point.
Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on
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I'm not sure Anyuta's anecdote about maths stands up.
My sister was much better at maths than I was, and we both learned at a traditional primary school, chanting times tables and so forth, in the 1960s, in the UK.
At secondary school, I continued to do traditional maths (we even used textbooks that had belonged to my mother's class!). I was the last year of grammar school and the last year of an all girls' school, though, and the school became comprehensive and admitted boys in the years below me. So my sister was confronted with a new style of maths, which included work cards saying things like "Basil Brayne says it's a good idea to learn our tables".
She was disgusted - she learned her tables by the age of nine, had an analytical approach, and ended up working in a bank.
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