Girls in STEM is failing both girls and STEM? 99

[moltenmetal]

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/com...m-culture-is-failing-both-girls-and-stem.html

Read the article, THEN discuss...

Growing up, I increasingly saw my good grades as a trap locking me into a single career: STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). It felt like a dystopian YA novel, and my high school report card was The Choosing. A’s in math and science? Here are your jeans and sweatshirt.

Well-meaning people lied to me. They said computer science was a great work-from-home career if I wanted children (when in fact a majority of women quit STEM because the culture of poor work-life balance makes it too difficult to raise a family), that STEM careers are secure (actually the industry has frequent layoffs and is very competitive), and more....

 

[hokie66]

It does look like Google has a toxic environment in its workplace.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08...eting-on-diversity-citing-workers-safety.html

 

[lacajun]

His false claim of a Ph.D. casts a lot of doubt on this young man. In reading some of the articles about Damore's actions, it's almost like he contrived the whole situation for his own purposes. Overall, he seems to lack a lot of skills necessary for management so he must be an inferior sample of the masculine gender. So, I have to conclude it's a case of sour grapes or mistaken identity of superiority to females.

This was a somewhat interesting piece...Diversity training backfires with Google engineer According to some gender bias studies, Damore's attitude is a minority attitude but that attitude is much stronger in engineering than law.

Here is his 10 page screed: Complete 10 page screed from Damore, former Google employee

IMHO, he is not balanced in many of his views and isn't balanced in his views on men either. He reveals his youth and lack of life experiences. Some of his views are offensive.

Women and other minorities know a little about how things work out trying to buck the system. When did African American males get the right to vote? Women got the right to vote when?

I watched Hidden Figures and wondered why I'd never heard one little, bitty snippet about those women and their contributions to the space program. The front for the space program, in my youth, was white male. I never thought women worked in it, let alone African American women, until Sally Ride came along. It was a pleasure to read about the women that movie is about.

Advancements in technology, medicine, society, education, etc. have changed our culture and some men cannot adapt to the changes. Michael Kimmel wrote Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, which might be a good book to read. I've not and cannot comment.


Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[CWB1]

He makes the claim that there are more men in management because that's what they want and what they are biologically driven to attain, and by extension, that's why there aren't more women in management.

His claim to be a liberal is belied by his recommendation to "stop alienating conservatives."

This just gets better and better. He apparently did NOT complete his PhD

Careful, your bias is showing.

What you perceive as the author's opinion many like myself read to pretty clearly be simply stating the facts and opinions of others, hence neutral headings such as "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech." You do not believe someone can consider opposing viewpoints much less defend them, I see this daily among colleagues who respect one another. You see something negative in failing to finish a doctoral program or being proud of being a candidate, I see more than 50% of students in Phd programs that failed while accomplishing more education than ~98% of the population.

To each their own, but the fact that he offended you does not mean you are correct.

 

[beej67]

If you're going to link to the "10 page screed," at least link to an unedited version of it that's got its references intact. Gizmodo did a sneaky bit of hackjobbery around this thing, stripping out the images and such.

https://diversitymemo.com/

I encourage everyone to read it themselves. There are some pretty large disconnects between the material presented in the memo, and the media's portrayal of the contents of the memo. One glaring difference, for instance, is the memo guy never once claims that women are worse at programming than men are.

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[IRstuff]

He offends me by being a wolf in sheep's clothing. This is the actual document as he published it:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.html

"clearly be simply stating the facts and opinions of others"

Almost half the document are his conclusions about Google's bias and how to correct them. Not once does he proffer a viewpoint counter to what you claim are only "facts and opinions of others."

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[lacajun]

Following one of the links previous to my post led me to the gizmodo site. In comparing his document with gizmodo's version, the words are intact. I compared the first few pages then spot checked the rest of the document.

Damore clearly uses words such as, "I'm simply stating...", "I'm not saying...", "I strongly believe...", "My larger point is...", "I don't think..." demonstrating these are clearly his thoughts and he is taking ownership of his thoughts. Now perhaps I don't read very good, and often I don't, or understand English and sentence structure very good, and I don't, but the use of so many personal pronouns clearly demonstrates his ownership of his thoughts. The use of "I" and "my" clearly make him the subject of those thoughts. Otherwise, he would be using other pronouns to define the subject, such as "they" or "them." He is not shifting ownership but clearly assuming it.

His position on political correctness is silly. To ignore that groups are marginalized and excluded and the beginning, of marginalization and exclusion, often begins with words is to be divorced from reality. Being Southern, I understand. Words and actions are inextricably linked.

His claim that the left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences) implies, because of the tone of his entire document, that women are inferior to men. He clearly claims to be a classical liberal but he clearly takes up the cause of the Far Right and pokes fun at liberals over the origins of IQ tests. To me, it seems his interpretation of history around the origins of the first IQ test is not clearly understood. Or, perhaps mine isn't.

He seems to have pulled from these researchers: Sociologist Cited by Summers Calls His Talk 'Uninformed'

And to Damore's Ph.D., these screen shots make it clear he was claiming to have a Ph.D. LinkedIn Screen Shots Before and After: Damore

The left maintains the myth of gender wage gap per Damore. That's no myth. It's fact. As it was explained to me, men are the primary bread winners of families so they are paid more. Really. I am the only bread winner for me so where does that leave me? And why does any of that matter? It is the value of the job not the cost of the family unit that bears consideration.

People I know on the Far Right are the only ones that disagree with the existence of the gender wage gap, from my experiences. Even when I have put government statistics in front of them they deny it and the data. It's all fake, even my own experiences in industry.

To attribute the lack of women in tech and leadership due to biological differences is silly and akin to Larry Summers' comments years ago. Summers' protestations about his words are similar to Damore's. That means they think half of the population does not understand tech and leadership because they are, well, women. That is as silly as saying men cannot understand the hurt feelings of their children because they are, well, men after all. Men are not emotionally clueless.

He demonstrates a lack of historical knowledge and thoughtfulness on the full context of the subject even if he only limited to his Google campus, as he claimed. What he claims to want to achieve fails because he falls into the same traps as those who discriminate, regardless of the political leanings. Those traps are his own biases and moral certainty of being right. He ignores fundamentals of life and seems to want a lot more ridigity in gender roles than is warranted, necessary, or real because of his own biases. He ignores the Bell Curve a bit too much and what studies have revealed, I think.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[beej67]

His claim that the left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences) implies, because of the tone of his entire document, that women are inferior to men.

I think this right here is where the public discourse about it comes off the rails.

I read through the thing four times looking for the part where he says women are worse programmers than men, and I still haven't found it. My wife (a construction estimator) did the same thing, didn't find it. Another female engineering friend (textiles) read it, didn't find it.

What I read said that women, taken as a population, might not enjoy it as much as men, taken as a population. It also said that men are more apt to sacrifice work-life balance than women, because while feminists have blown up women's gender roles quite well, nobody's done the same exercise for men. Our "gender role" is to sacrifice fun and family for work, money, status. I for one wish that male gender role would go away.

Some other critiques ... he only mentions the wage gap once, and makes no claims to it in either direction. His focus is the gap in representation in the field. He repeatedly states that pushing for a 50/50 split in employment in his field may not be possible if you think the only cause of that gap is sexism, and leave out the choices people make about their employment.

I don't know if the science he references is sound or not, but there are certainly a lot of scientists who weighed in on his side in the aftermath. Here are two examples.

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opi...sity-its-science/article35903359/?service=amp

I'm not saying Google isn't sexist. I have no idea. But his document didn't say Google wasn't sexist either. It just tried to draw attention to some other reasons that might lead to female employment at Google being only 20%.



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[moltenmetal]

I've been staying out of this and will stay out, but wanted to thank beej67 and their wife, and wife's colleague, for reading that thing so I didn't have to.

 

[Maui]

If you have the intelligence to become an engineer then you have the intelligence to *not* be an engineer.

 

[lansford]

The worst reason for a female to go into engineering is because "they are good in math and science in High School"
Where is the mechanical aptitude?
Coding and software are better choices.

All you have to do is ask yourself ..How many young girls ask for toy electric trains for Christmas?

Lansford

 

[MFJewell]

All you have to do is ask yourself ..How many young girls ask for toy electric trains for Christmas?

That is a societal issue. How many adverts have you seen that market a toy train to females? When girls are taught from birth that cooking and caring for babies is what they should be interested in, it can be hard to break them away from that.

 

[CWB1]

The worst reason for a female to go into engineering is because "they are good in math and science in High School"
Where is the mechanical aptitude?

JMO but that is the worst reason for ANYONE to go into engineering. I concur with the sentiment otherwise.

 

[IRstuff]

"Where is the mechanical aptitude? Coding and software are better choices."

I never had "mechanical aptitude" and did fine in EE. And why is CS not considered to be engineering, since UC Berkeley certainly has it in the school of engineering



TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[3DDave]

Comp Sci is in engineering because when it was in the Business school they kept threatening to replace the Business majors with macros. The revenge came when the Business graduates later off-shored the Comp-Sci jobs.

 

[IRstuff]

Regardless, the engineering school degree from UCB is Electrical Engineering Computer Science (EECS)

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[nonplussed]

I have read through most of this thread and I am somewhat disappointed that many are willing to turn their back on evidence based science when discussing such a serious topic as women in engineering. The only references anyone is discussing are opinion pieces and media articles. I'm sure most people are aware of the ideological forces leading gender science and sociology now days (

https://www.researchgate.net/public...iological_Ideas_among_Sociological_Theorists)

and that many publications coming out of universities and academia are not evidence based science but simply politically correct dogma. This topic on gender equality has now become a driving force in most workplaces and because it is so important I encourage everyone to step back from presumption and look at this from a logical, evidence based, point of view.

A significant phenomenon that no one has addressed is the Norwegian gender equality paradox. An explanation of the paradox is explained in this documentary (

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70

) and I encourage everyone to watch it as it's very interesting and also entertaining. Essentially, Norway is ranked as the most egalitarian and gender equal country in the world. They have high female representation in corporate boards (44%,

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/files/epo_campaign/131014_countryprofile_norway.pdf),

a female prime minister, equal maternity and paternity leave (over 6 months for men), and the list goes on. However, when it comes the engineering and nursing, they have incredibly low levels of gender diversity. And this is the paradox; the more egalitarian a society becomes, the less females become engineers and the less males become nurses.

In fact, as shown here (

http://www.oecd.org/gender/data/gender-gap-in-education.htm),

this is prevalent between countries (take note that female rates in engineering are far lower than the graph shows since the graph includes science such as biology which is weighted toward females). The countries with higher gender equality show distinctly lower levels of female participation in science and engineering. And remarkably, the least egalitarian countries Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have the highest proportion of females choosing science and engineering.

This is not surprising if viewed from the perspective that there are two factors that affect the male and female decision to work in an occupation. Environmental and biological factors. As environmental factors are stripped, and the society becomes more gender equal, then the only factor left is biological and this factor is therefore emphasized to the extreme.

Regarding another statement others have said here, that children are taught during childhood to act male or female (and subsequently choose engineering or nursing) by things such as the toys their parents give them, this is anecdotal and contradicts recent studies. (

https://www.researchgate.net/public...ferences_in_Human_Neonatal_Social_Perception)

102 babies, only 1 day old, were tested to see whether they have more interest in a human face or a mechanical object and results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the mechanical object while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. Another separate study testing babies aged 9 to 32 months correlates with this (

http://www.pitt.edu/~bertsch/Todd_et_al-2016-Infant_and_Child_Development.pdf).

The ability to learn language and communication is also inversely proportional to prenatal hormone exposure (

http://docs.autismresearchcentre.co...and postnatal hormone effects_EuJPhysio.pdf).

Higher prenatal testosterone levels lead to difficulty in learning language and communication skills and more focus on analytical skills.

In conclusion, as I see it from looking at only fact based evidence, the gender diversity push in engineering is doomed to failure (unless society becomes less gender equal). By this I don't mean women should not pursue engineering. In fact, all the women I have ever worked with in engineering have all been talented, self motivated, intelligent engineers, and they were this way because they were not forced into it but chose it by their own free will. But to reach a 50% ratio means forcing women into engineering who have no natural interest in the field. In the same way that forcing 50% of nurses to be men (yes, that means some of you men in the forum will have to change occupation) is a pipe dream and works against the interest of both women and men.

 

[IRstuff]

"In conclusion, as I see it from looking at only fact based evidence, the gender diversity push in engineering is doomed to failure (unless society becomes less gender equal). By this I don't mean women should not pursue engineering."

This is a misguided conclusion; even in the Youtube video was someone who responded to the effect that "women have always been caregivers," thus showing that even in that country, attitudes are not necessarily egalitarian. When contrasted to the US, one can obviously see that the US is a long ways from not needing to encourage women to find their ideal jobs and roles. It's not a question of "women should not pursue engineering" since its clearly the case in the US that women don't necessarily have a free choice in the matter. So, here's EVIDENCE of that:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41763373.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:93435cf877041ce2037c5bb2127755d5

This effect has been shown to have the similar effects with ethnic and gendered names in non-STEM environments as well.

We are so far from being close to gender and race neutral and yet there are people saying, "everything's fine, we don't need that." When the UC system was ordered to eliminate racial preference, the percentage Hispanic applicants and admissions dropped, and so the "evidence" is that Hispanics either aren't college material, or aren't interested in college, neither of which are true. The events of Ferguson and others show that animus and prejudice against blacks run so incredibly deep that even in the face of obvious bias, the police still can't stop themselves from following down that path. And that's with something that's only been a "thing" since the Civil War. Contrasted with millenia of gender role bias, it's not clear to me that there's really sufficient evidence that we're really free to follow only our genetics.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[solid7]

Maybe we're trying too hard to define a problem where one doesn't exist. We talk a lot about girls not pursuing STEM degrees and careers - but we don't seem to care that men aren't pursuing more nursing or secretarial positions. (that was an intentional bit of hyperbole) Does it really matter? Shouldn't we be much more focused on full employment for all people who are qualified to do a particular job?

I cannot make it my life goal to encourage people into careers and educations that they don't want to pursue. Is there some point that we can just accept that people are already pursuing what they want to do, and be content with that?

To point out and strive correct injustices is a noble thing; but to try to steer an outcome based on the perception the same, is not.

 

[SLTA]

OH GOOD LORD.

This whole thing isn't about forcing women to be interested in something they're not. That may have happened to one woman, but how many people over time have similarly complained about being forced into the family business or being a doctor when they'd rather do something else? The problem lies with women who are highly qualified and very interested in STEM being driven out of STEM by crappy attitudes, etc.

You can try and make yourself feel better about this by saying it's not really a problem if that helps you be ok, but you're just lying to yourself.

And now I'm so angry that I'm shaking. Time to walk away.

Please remember: we're not all guys!

 

[solid7]

I'm sorry about your inability to control your emotions. Typically, that's a factor in any discussion like this. I want to believe that if there's a problem that needs to be solved, it should be given the utmost consideration. But there are facts and figures, and there's the human factor, and it's very hard to find the balance between the two. Your statements do absolutely nothing to work toward that end.

I don't know if it's a problem or not, and I'm being honest when I say that. It's not a problem that I've seen - but I'm just one person, with my own set of experiences. What I DO know for a fact, is that women are entering STEM fields at a much lower rate than men and certain minorities. I've seen no compelling evidence EVER that there is some sort of orchestrated effort to bully them out, before they enter the work force. And once again, any workplace hostility that causes ANY employee to want to leave their employment needs to be addressed, but on its own merits.

In the meantime, the discussion should still be focused on how we can expect to achieve parity in the workplace (relative to society as a whole) where it doesn't exist in the pool of educated employees for a given discipline.