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....

 

[IRstuff]

"no compelling evidence EVER that there is some sort of orchestrated effort to bully them out"

I think the whole point of a lot of the postings is that there does not need to be a "orchestrated effort," if every actor in the process is biased already.

As a male, you probably didn't bother to keep track of how often females were allowed to answer questions in class, and a member of the privileged class rarely notices those out of privilege. My point about police behavior is that their responses and behavior are so ingrained that even when it's obvious to an outsider that they need to be more circumspect, they continue their behavior. Given that, we can only assume that gender bias works the same way, and the studies bear that out. Take a resume and change the between an obviously white or male name to an obviously black or female name and see how often it winds up in the round file compared to the white or male resume. That didn't take orchestration; it's already programmed into our brains.

And it may well be that genetics does play a significant role in our choices, and parity might not be the ideal operating point, but if we continue to ignore reality, we will most definitely never find out.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[ScottyUK]

IRstuff,

I don't often disgaree with you, but as one of the people who decides who gets an interview at our place I really do have a problem with your statement

Take a resume and change the between an obviously white or male name to an obviously black or female name and see how often it winds up in the round file compared to the white or male resume. That didn't take orchestration; it's already programmed into our brains.

I've been so desperate to recruit good techs that I would interview anyone who made the rough cut based on the content of their CV (resume). I am absolutely not bothered if they're male or female. I don't care if they're black, white, brown or bright green. I frankly wouldn't care if the candidate was a dog, as long as the dog convinced me that it could do the job I need doing, to the standard I required. The UK has a chronic shortage of talent in some specialist areas, and dismissing perfectly capable candidates based on their colour or gender is something I simply couldn't afford to do even if my morals and ethics were sufficiently messed up that I wanted to. Maybe things are different in your part of the world; if this kind of thing has been your experience then I'm sorry to hear it.


What I do acknowledge is that the vast majority of candidates I get to choose from are white and male. Right now I don't get to decide who is in the pool, I just get to choose from those who put themselves forward.

 

[solid7]

What I do acknowledge is that the vast majority of candidates I get to choose from are white and male. Right now I don't get to decide who is in the pool, I just get to choose from those who put themselves forward.

Which is exactly the point that I was making, all along. This is my perspective, as well as my observation.

 

[GregLocock]

My heart grinds as I post this. It seems obvious to me that females are under represented in engineering. That is to say, there are far fewer femsle engineers than males. Now, it may be that for some reason that a 50/50 balance is not a a sensible target, but 4% or 10% doesn't seem quite right either. However the politically correct promotion system in big companies tends to suck good female engineers out into management, hence emphasising the imbalance.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[IRstuff]

Didn't say you personally were doing it, but there are enough others to be more than statistically significant. I don't know if you get all resumes directly, or if you get them from HR. If the latter, you might want to check the round file to see how many got rejected.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[ScottyUK]

That's a fair question IRstuff, although I'm pretty sure that I'm seeing every applicant given the numbers of applicants involved are low. Next time we're interviewing I'll definitely ask whether any applications were pre-screened and disregarded, and on what basis they were rejected.

I realise your earlier comment wasn't directed at me personally but I don't think I'm too far different in my outlook to other engineers in the UK. Maybe things are different here compared to the US?

 

[CWB1]

I have no doubt women face some very different challenges than men, including what might be seen as borderline harassment but I have serious doubts about the "subconscious discrimination" bit in hiring. At companies I've worked, if the candidate made it past the ATS they were guaranteed at least a HR phone screen simply due to the HR process and unless there was glaring issues with the candidate they were also guaranteed a phone screen with the interviewing managers. The true filtering of employees IME is (mostly) by ATS and management after speaking to the employee, the system being set up to allow multiple managers access to a single candidate to improve placement while preventing nepotism and other nonsense.

OTOH, having sat next to females in multiple offices I have seen them struggle to remain polite and get work done due to streams of guys stopping by daily to chat for 5-10 mins each. We all enjoy a bit of bs once in awhile but some days I want to either hang a sign or start embarrassing folks as the stream of bs small-talkers seems never-ending.

 

[IRstuff]

I suspect that the Dunning-Kruger effect applies to more than just judging one's own competence, i.e., that it might apply to judging one's own biases. And, certainly, for those that think of themselves as completely unbiased, the biases might be quite subtle, i.e, it could well be a matter of not saying (to oneself), "this is a black-ish name, so out they go," but more likely a subconscious change in how the resume is perceived, i.e., punctuation, typeset, grammar, etc. And it might well be that at the end of the process, you feel truly disappointed that the black, or female-sounding named person wasn't suitably qualified and you had to reluctantly hire a white male. Stephen Jay Gould gave an example once about trying to compare cranial capacity of whites and blacks, and the original researchers came to the disappointing conclusion that blacks had smaller brain capacity, even though, when the same skulls were examined later, there was no statistic difference in capacity.

As a sort of case in point, we recently bid on a contract and was rejected because our cost proposal data wasn't formatted correctly. Now, they could have just been a*holey, but it's more likely that they really didn't like what we had to say and were looking for some way to reject us. Surely, had they loved our proposal, they would have figured out a way to get us to re-submit the cost volume with the desired formatting of data.

And, again, these effects, particularly in hiring, which have been well-studied are subtle, but statistically significant. It's like casino games, a tiny edge in odds means that, over time, the house wins.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[solid7]

OTOH, having sat next to females in multiple offices I have seen them struggle to remain polite and get work done due to streams of guys stopping by daily to chat for 5-10 mins each. We all enjoy a bit of bs once in awhile but some days I want to either hang a sign or start embarrassing folks as the stream of bs small-talkers seems never-ending.

That's not even a valid point for the conversation, that last one. Females receiving an undue amount of male attention isn't STEM specific. That's pretty much how human sexuality works.

 

[ScottyUK]

solid7,

I agree that that's how it's supposed to work in nature, but in the workplace men really should be able to keep their libido in check. There's a world of difference between a few moments of friendly conversation with a female colleague at the coffee machine / water cooler compared to disturbing her while she's trying to do her job. Maybe us Brits are just well-behaved and know where the boundaries lie.


IRstuff,

Badly presented CV's do indeed get rejected from time to time, and sometimes the errors get pointed out to the candidate during the interview while they're busy telling me what a detail-conscious and thorough person they are. My concern is that if someone sends me a document which is important to them but which is full of grammatical errors, how much care will they take with jobs that are important to me? Errors in commercial bids are dealt with in a similar manner.

Plenty white male candidates have had their CV's binned or have had a very rough ride through the interview because they couldn't be bothered to proof-read their application, and of the few companies who have had their bids rejected I think all had white male customer-facing staff. It really isn't anything to do with race or gender in my experience: it's down to due care and attention, which is a fairly level playing field for all to compete on regardless of colour or gender.

 

[solid7]

solid7,

I agree that that's how it's supposed to work in nature, but in the workplace men really should be able to keep their libido in check. There's a world of difference between a few moments of friendly conversation with a female colleague at the coffee machine / water cooler compared to disturbing her while she's trying to do her job. Maybe us Brits are just well-behaved and know where the boundaries lie. smile

OK, but none of that is relevant, any more than it was when the other person brought it up. In fact, that WAS and IS the point. Human sexual behavior is not the reason women are leaving STEM fields, any more than it is the reason that they are leaving any other profession where men and women work together. Or, in plain English, male engineers don't talk to female engineers, any more or less than say, male grocery clerks talk to female grocery clerks. Or to put it one more way, it's irrelevant to the discussion. NOT STEM related...

 

[ScottyUK]

You sure about that?

Female STEM graduates - and seasoned female STEM professionals - have choices where they work. Maybe not all paying equally, but still choices. I hope no one leaves our profession because of a queue of guys hitting on them in the office. Maybe STEM females have more choices than the average female, and if they're choosing to leave STEM because of our attitudes then that is a real f'kin mess. No way of prettying that up.

 

[solid7]

Yes, I'm sure that it isn't the scope of the conversation. Because once men chatting up women enters the fray, it isn't a STEM related concept, anymore. It might as well extend all the way to the halls of Congress. So try to stay focused, please. Women leave jobs in every sector for this type of behavior. It doesn't make it acceptable - it's just not part of the conversation, at hand. Once conversations become so broad and tangential, they are no longer the same conversation.

The point of the conversation has always been how well represented women are in STEM related fields. Even with everything that's been discussed, the reasons for under-representation still point to the fact that women pursue STEM degrees at a much lower rate than white men and certain minorities. The conversation has to start there. Even those suggesting that there is an evolutionary pre-disposition towards dismissing females at the pre-educational level - no matter how unfounded or unsupported their positions are - are more on point than those suggesting that women leave STEM fields because of unrequited attention.

 

[lacajun]

Because women are hit upon, harassed, propositioned, etc. across the work force doesn't render it irrelevant in STEM. It remains an aspect of STEM and a reason some women, very capable of entering engineering, never consider it because they know how men are. Not all men but enough that they are not willing to put up with it. It is just one aspect of men they understand to walk away from.

I almost left engineering due to being hit upon, harassed, propositioned, cat called, etc.

One married man, an engineer, propositioned me for sex because he wasn't getting it from his wife and I was a good looking, single woman. In his words, he knew I needed sex. He wasn't embarrassed in the least to proposition me. He wasn't the only engineer to do so either.

I've had foremen harass me for sex so much I was relieved to get away from one by going to another plant. He wasn't the primary reason for me transferring but I was surprised to feel the relief of not having to put up with him. I was also dismayed that he transferred into the same plant soon after me because he had gotten into trouble at our former plant. He immediately began the same behaviors. He did it to me and the other women there, by his own admission. I warned him about it but he ignored me. He was going to continue because he never knew when he would get lucky or weaken one of his prey. He finally ran into a female operator that turned him in and he was fired.

I could write a book about my experiences with male engineers and males in the workplace. After awhile, it gets really old and you just want men to stop. That is a sentiment I have heard from other women in engineering. And even when you tell them to stop, a good portion don't, which is part of character disturbance. One such man told me that the men in that plant felt like women were there for them to take, if they wanted. Everything in the plant was for them, i.e., the men. They were entitled.

I've been called a token so many times I think of myself that way at various times. The engineer, a very bright, likeable man, admitted that I was doing "real" engineering work but that I was still a token. The secretary told him to stop many times but he never did. He would laugh, say he was right, and continue on. Token would be uttered multiple times in one conversation.

Another male engineer routinely walked up to me on the plant floor and told me how healthy the good ol' boys club is and that I'd never be a member as a woman.

I've had male engineers gang up on me and sabotage my work. They were too ignorant to do the jobs they had and too stupid to want to learn from anyone including me. Of course, the engineering managers didn't help and they were also men.

I've had other engineers lie to management about my work. This one did it openly then began a campaign behind my back with the plant manager and others who were dishonest, too dependent on him for what to think, and cowardly enough to listen to him.

One engineer, two levels above me in management, seemed on the verge of punching my lights out. All indications were clear and he moved closer to intimidate me. He has about a foot in height on me and is twice my weight. His fists were clinched by his sides, his jugulars were bulging, his pasty white skin was red, and his whole body was shaking with rage. I stood my ground, which made him angry. I was right and we both knew it. Many in that plant commented about how much that one manager chastised, criticized, and attacked me for the most asinine stuff. He was identified by many as a bully. He was a real jerk and shortly afterwards put me on notice to be terminated. No one said anything except HR and they had no explanations. I transferred into a corporate engineering position upon getting my MS. He was moved back to the research center, which derailed his plans to be the next plant manager of that plant or another one. After he was removed from that plant, some of his immediate subordinates sent me all kinds of company gifts. It was surreal.

This kind of stupidity reaches across the generations. I am 57 years old and remember the stories from the older female engineers that told me how things were for them and would be for me. I remember the comments from some of the older male engineers, who would be in their 80's today. I've had men 20 years my junior tell me that by even getting the engineering degree I had taken the spot a man should have. Another man 20 years my junior told me that I was a front for a male owned company that was really going to do the work. He "knew" how things worked and women owned engineering firms are just like black owned engineering firms, i.e., not smart like white men thus incapable of doing the work. Estimate the decades and determine your own thoughts. I have.

That I have my Professional Engineering license, in three states, in electrical engineering means nothing to them. The fact that I, not anyone else, took all the courses, did the homework, exams, labs, etc. for undergraduate and graduate engineering degrees means nothing to quite a few men. Somehow I wrangled it but it couldn't have been through my own intellect, desire to learn it, and work ethic. They wanted to view me as inferior or their own personal play thing. I am neither. Really, you cannot make this stuff up.

At this point in my life, I find it ignorant and often stupid for any man to tell me what does and does not exist in STEM for women and how I am to think and feel about it. They view life through their optics, which are far, far, far different than mine. No man has ever been told he didn't belong in engineering because of his gender. No man, with a BS in engineering, was ever told he was too educated to be an engineer, with the implication that people didn't like him because he earned a BS in engineering. An engineering manager, male, told me that.

If I write about my experiences in industry too much, men, engineering men, accuse me of whining. However, until men come to grips with all of the stories women in STEM and elsewhere have to share, men will continue to hide behind their ignorance and stupidity. It takes a lot of courage to exam oneself and conclude that work needs to be done and it's not technical competence work. It's personality and character work. I have endured so much criticism from men, engineers and otherwise, I've worked on myself because I thought I was some deficient human being. I had problems but I was not deficient. Also, many of those men were projecting their own faults, flaws, and weaknesses onto me.

It is high time that men stop analyzing me and others like me and start analyzing themselves. Stop pointing out what you think is wrong with me and start pointing out what is wrong with you. I work like a dog to do good work and to treat people fairly. I expect the same in return and have often not gotten it. I don't try to stir up trouble for anyone and will take a lot of crap from others. But, at some point, the crap flinging needs to stop. If it doesn't, it's time to walk away. And as women like me walk away, the chances of your daughters having an even more enjoyable engineering career become even more remote.

For those of you with daughters, think about it. Do you really want them to experience men, old and young, blatantly propositioning them for sex? Do you want your daughters to experience those blatantly propositioning men to relentlessly pursue your daughters, with the sole purpose to wear her will down to zero? Do you want your daughter to be told she doesn't belong? Do you want your daughter to be told she isn't as intelligent as a man? Do you want your daughter to be told she isn't smart enough to be an engineer? Do you want your daughter to be told her gender doesn't suit certain jobs? Do you want your daughter to fear for her physical safety? Do you want your daughter to fear a violent act? Do you want your daughter to live in fear? Do you want your daughter to limit herself because she hears the "no value" message so much? Do you want your daughters to die a death by a thousand cuts?

Personally, I am sick and tired of men telling me how I am to think and feel about my life experiences. That's my job. I know more about my life and what's it's done to me than anyone alive. So many men have condescending and patronizing remarks but they completely miss how inappropriate, inaccurate, and unnecessary they are.

One of my tormenters, the young man who routinely told me about the health of the good ol' boys club, is now the father to a little girl. I hope like heck that she doesn't run into what her father did to me. That's the ultimate of telling someone they are an outsider, will always be an outsider, you're minimal, unimportant, diminished, don't count, and disenfranchised because the good ol' boys club says you are because of your gender. No one gets to tell me how to think or feel about that experience. That's my job. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. No one should hear that kind of garbage in the workforce. You're being paid to be on the same team. That that kind of thing does happen tells me many men know nothing about true teamwork. They only know teamwork with people like themselves.

I love engineering. I have thoroughly enjoyed my career. I have worked with some wonderful men but the stinkers have hit home in many negative ways. I hope the future changes for younger women. It breaks my heart to read some of the accounts of younger women because too little has changed and they will be viewed as less than during their careers. Make no mistake about the depths of meanness in some men and the depths to which they will reach to destroy, utterly so, any woman he wants to for any reason.

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

http://nspe-co.org/events.php

 

[solid7]

I just don't know how much clearer this can be - sexual harassment, getting hit on, or any other type of invitation to engage in interpersonal relations - it isn't STEM unique, and wasn't ever the point of the conversation. I do not condone it, nor do I agree with it. But it honestly can't be the reason why there aren't more women in engineering. If it were, it would have to be offset by the tide of women leaving other fields for the same reason. If you leave a job in engineering because men are overly interested in you, what job will you go to? What profession is safe? People of all types can, and do, leave jobs for any number of reasons related to the people they work with.

There should be no reason to doubt that women in engineering are the object of men's fascination - and sometimes advances. It's clear that it happens. But bottom line... there is no evidence that this is keeping women OUT of STEM careers, which (the overall number of women getting/not getting STEM degrees) seems to be the real reason that there aren't more women in in STEM careers. This issue is being confused by problems that are endemic to society, and human nature, in general.

One problem, at a time!

 

[moltenmetal]

I commend lacajun for sharing her lived experience. I'd suggest, from my own lived personal experience, and that of my wife, that you see exaggerated tendencies any time you segregate the sexes. I went to a mixed male/female junior high school from grades 7-10, and then an all boys Catholic high school from 11-13 back when Ontario had gr 13- and you couldn't help but notice the exaggerated male tendencies on display in front of you on a daily basis. My wife experienced the exact same thing in costume studies at university- exaggerated female tendencies. These exaggerated tendencies differ between the sexes as you would expect. And both of us saw these tendencies continue in our working lives, working in situations where there was one predominant sex. It is not unique to men- women when segregated in a group setting DO generate exaggerated behaviors and tendencies too- different ones from the males. These tendencies can be extremely irritating not just for members of the opposite sex who are part of the school or work environment, but can be (and was for both of us) extremely difficult to experience as members of the predominant sex whose attitudes were different than that of the normative group.

It has also been my observation that it doesn't take many members of the opposite sex to de-normalize these exaggerated tendencies of the predominant sex and keep them at bay, at least in a public setting. 5% isn't enough, but 15% is getting close.

I'd argue that exaggerated behaviors of the sort that lacajun has regrettably experienced throughout her career are related to being a female in a male-dominated profession. They are not STEM related per se, in that a female pipefitter or welder would experience these issues, and likely even worse, than a female engineer would. I'm confident that male nurses, as an example, report similar experiences, though the irritating behaviors they experience are going to be totally different than those that a female in a male dominated profession would experience.

In our own workplace, our female staff have experienced far more issues with our male-dominated manufacturing staff than from the male engineers. It could be that we're lucky that our engineering staff is predominantly chemical engineers, where the sex balance has been better than the average of all engineers for at least the 26 yrs I've been in the profession. My chem eng class was ~ 30% female and it's now around 35% female at my alma mater.

If men (on average) could choose, I sincerely doubt they'd choose their profession to be uniquely male. That by no means indicates that men are not, still, on average, biased to consider a man more competent in a technical field than a woman. That happens, for sure, and it is an expression of human psychology in my opinion- one which tends to make the interviewing process a very blunt tool at best. Without proper training, people of both sexes tend to confuse assertiveness (something which is easy enough to pick up in an interview) with competence. A certain amount of assertiveness is absolutely necessary and the lack of it in either sex is detrimental to performance, but it tends to over-weigh in the minds of interviewers in my experience. That does go against a normative female tendency, and therefore it should be expected to be a source of male favouring bias- not just in males, but in female interviewers as well.

All that said, I believe that there is no imperative whatsoever to have a balance of the sexes in any profession with only one exception: teaching. What we should seek to do is to provide equality of opportunity at all stages so that girls and boys, men and women, have the opportunity to pursue what interests and excites them without fear or favour. We must continue to try our best to weed out systematic bias when we are aware of it, and to punish the exaggerated tendencies resulting from sex segregation when they impact workplaces and schools. We know that systematic bias occurs, on the basis of not just sex obviously, but the famous example is that the hiring rates of female versus male symphony musicians changed dramatically when the auditions were carried out blind, i.e. candidate behind a screen, candidates numbered rather than named, such that only the quality of their playing was being judged.

 

[lacajun]

solid7, I understood your point quite clearly and do today as well as yesterday. You are missing some points.

moltenmetal, a Chemical Engineer, with an MBA, in response to my comment about not being discriminated against at that particular place of employment, said, "Oh, you are. You just don't see it. As laws are passed, we find more clever ways to discriminate against you. Men have the power, positions, and money and we're not about to give those up." He is a member of management to this day. One of my lessons from that is men, even highly educated men, find women too dumb to understand how we're being discriminated against because they're so smart. It never occurred to him that I didn't suspect it because I thought that company was full of people with more class! After his statements, I knew better.

A Canadian female doctor told me she didn't face nearly what I did as an engineer. She's 15 years older than me. I didn't tell her the worst of my experiences but the least. She was on vacation and I had no desire to spoil it too much. We were on a ski lift so I struck up a conversation. Most of what she faced was being left out and given the cold shoulder because the male doctors didn't want her there. Some didn't think women were smart enough to be doctors. They didn't hit on her. They didn't lie about her work. They didn't sabotage her work. They didn't bully her. For the most part, they were very professional. With time, they grew to accept her as one of them, a Medical Doctor. I have concluded that the extra education it takes to become a Medical Doctor continues the refining effect on the mind and that explains the difference to me.

I've been part of interviewing teams for many years. Men, in my presence, have openly discussed the drawbacks to hiring women engineers, which includes:
[ul]
[li]married will follow husbands career[/li]
[li]married will want children (lost work time due to pregnancy, birth, maternity leave, etc.)[/li]
[li]married and will have children then will leave to raise the kids[/li]
[li]no prior experience[/li]
[li]didn't grow up on a farm; may not have mechanical aptitude[/li]
[li]single: does she want to get married[/li]
[/ul]

For years, I've read and heard many comments from women in STEM about men. I know why they are leaving.


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

http://nspe-co.org/events.php

 

[solid7]

To counter that - I've worked under female engineering managers, on more than one occasion, who were standouts in their field, and had no problem commanding the respect of their subordinates and superiors, alike. That's not to try to neutralize your examples, but just to point out that one person's experiences don't compose the whole picture. (just as mine also, do not)

I understand what you're saying, but for much of the last 15 to 20 years, most companies of any size or worth, have promoted a platform of gender inclusivity. Additionally, hiring attitudes have shifted significantly, in that many places - certainly most that I have worked in - do not have an expectation of employee longevity or loyalty. (especially if they're publicly traded firms) And to go one step farther, most of the kids of any sex or ethnicity, are graduating school these days without any practical experience. Let's not even mention that some companies also give paternity leave. If that type of thinking still persists, it's unimaginable how it could be justified.

Forgive me if I've missed it somewhere in this thread - but do we have some sort of data on girls who graduate with STEM degrees (historically), vs those who put that degree to use, vs those who leave STEM fields? I understand the passion on the subject, but how does it really play out? What percentage of female STEM graduates are fully employed?

Now one more time... it is not acceptable to mistreat or marginalize women in the workplace. That needs to be found out, and punished. But as it's been pointed out, that's not just going on in STEM fields, and we can't blame it for women not pursuing STEM degrees. Or if we can, we need to prove it, and deal with it at that level.

 

[moltenmetal]

lacajun, I'm not denying or defending systematic discrimination on the basis of sex whatsoever- I know it exists, but I differ with both you and your former colleague as to some of the reasons why it does. It persists even in people who have no wish to be discriminatory and who actively try not to be- and it exists in women as well as in men. What you've experienced is beyond discrimination and into abuse and harassment. That still exists too- but most companies at least try to eliminate that kind of behavior when it happens and they find out about it- sometimes because they actually care about it, and sometimes because they understand the legal implications of ignoring it. A better balance between the sexes does help to reduce the tendency of that sort of ugliness to express itself in the light of day.

 

[hokie66]

I have read some of this, but have little to contribute. One statement which stands out, though, is moltenmetal's comment "I believe there is no imperative whatsoever to have a balance of the sexes in any profession with only one exception: teaching." That is an age old issue, and I think getting worse. Men are not interested in teaching as a profession, for lots of reasons.