Women in Engineering II 54

[lacajun]

Since the first post on this is closed, I decided to begin a new post.

This is a dated but interesting report that I'm working my way through. As I read through it, I see improvements that can be made to benefit women as well as men.

Women in Engineering: An Untapped Resource

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

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

 

[beej67]

Until the playing field is truly level, and all biases are truly removed can we then determine whether a 50/50 ratio is plausible.

Well this is the main problem. If you believe, as I tend to, that the nordic countries have a more level playing field with fewer biases than we do, then the evidence indicates that evening the playing field would move the ratio further away from 50/50, instead of towards 50/50.

Good article on the subject:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...nder-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/

So this idea that "The ratio is due to the patriarchy" doesn't hold water at all. It's patently false. In test cases worldwide, "less patriarchy" creates more STEM gap.


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[IRstuff]

" the nordic countries have a more level playing field with fewer biases than we do"

I think they have imposed a different layer of biases, as exemplified in a documentary mentioned elsewhere; it was pretty clear that while they had no overt discrimination, they paradoxically felt a stronger affinity to gender roles.


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[Sparweb]

It's this passage from the article that seems to capture the effect:

The upshot of this research is neither especially feminist nor especially sad: It’s not that gender equality discourages girls from pursuing science. It’s that it allows them not to if they’re not interested.

So while I don't think there's much association between social patriarchy and enrollment in STEM education, as beej67 puts it, I think I do see how social instability in each society can. I think they are saying that, male or female, why bother with the discipline of a technical career that you don't really want if you can earn a living making ice sculptures? I'm not sure I completely agree with that position, but it does touch a nerve.



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[Compositepro]

Here is a 6 minute video of Jordan Peterson explaining the research on gender differences in STEM. There are plenty of others.

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

 

[IRstuff]

But, he doesn't explain why, only that they exist; moreover, he seemingly makes the same mistake many people do, equating correlation with causality.

He also makes the point that at the junior high level, there is almost no difference in either aptitude or interest; the divergence occurs later, which suggests some sort of socio-cultural effect, which he dismisses. There may indeed not be, but it's irrelevant to whether biases and and discrimination exist in the US, because they do exist. Otherwise, we'd likewise have claim that blacks are genetically predisposed to not be interested in STEM, as well. And maybe they aren't, but we're nowhere close to having a society without biases and discrimination in the US.

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[HamburgerHelper]

Not side tracking but how come the medical field is not tied in with STEM? There were a lot of classes that I had that had included people that were pre-med and the gender ratio amongst pre-meds was pretty even. It is hard to argue that the ability isn't there just from how rigorous the training processes is to become a medical doctor. Maybe, they were just smarter than me and they realized that medicine is a better field than engineering.



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[IRstuff]

Probably because it's associated by extension to nursing. While it's rigorous, in everyday practice, there's that not much actual science or math, although there might be some technology, but even then, it's as a user and not as a developer or designer.

Moreover, my spouse, who is a doctor, would argue that it's at a better field, particularly at the family practice end.

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[beej67]

I think they have imposed a different layer of biases, as exemplified in a documentary mentioned elsewhere; it was pretty clear that while they had no overt discrimination, they paradoxically felt a stronger affinity to gender roles.

That's an interesting theory, but it doesn't explain what's going on at the other end of the graph. The countries with the highest female STEM participation are middle eastern countries with hijabs and polygamy and clitoral mutilation.

If you apply Occam's Razor, the simplest cleanest explanation is that in places where your income is the least tied to your occupation, women choose STEM the least. When the money doesn't matter, they largely choose professions that have to do with people instead of things, on a statistical basis. Because of scientifically measurable biological differences in the statistical distributions of personality traits. Not because of "society" or whatever.

It's a choice thing. Women choose STEM more when the money gives them more incentive, and would choose STEM less if the money didn't matter.

Probably because it's associated by extension to nursing. While it's rigorous, in everyday practice, there's that not much actual science or math, although there might be some technology, but even then, it's as a user and not as a developer or designer.

Oh come on. Nursing is just as STEM related as engineering sales is. It's more science related than many straight engineering positions. The reason they don't put nursing in STEM, is because the underlying gist of the entire category of STEM is "professional fields about things," as opposed to people. Medicine and nursing get thrown out because they're scientific fields about people. They literally drew the lines around what counts as "STEM" based on gender interest tropes.




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[lacajun]

The countries with the highest female STEM participation are middle eastern countries with hijabs and polygamy and clitoral mutilation.

I put that sentence into a search engine and found nothing to support it; I found opinion pieces that do not support it but I don't consider those valid. We all have opinions. May I impose upon you to provide a reputable source for that statement? Thx!

Some of you may find the movie On the Basis of Sex interesting as well as educational. It's very well done. As a reminder, I've heard some of what's in that movie by men 20 years my junior. To me, that's a sad statement to make given our right to vote is now 100 years old.

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

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

 

[Sparweb]

The countries with the highest female STEM participation are middle eastern countries...

I put that sentence into a search engine and found nothing to support it...

This does:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...nder-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/

Algeria
Tunisia
UAE
Turkey

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[GregLocock]

So given the Scandis aren't very likely to discriminate, it would appear the natural level of women in STEM is 20-25% or so.



Cheers

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[Sparweb]

I don't think that chart has any predictive power... just reporting stats as they chose them and finding a trend.
"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
STF

 

[hokie66]

The Scandinavian outliers have generous social welfare systems, so women don't need to strive so hard to achieve their desired lifestyles. In the oppressive Islamic countries, STEM seems the only way out, so that's where discrimination comes in. I prefer somewhere in between, like the US and Australia.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I don't think that the ratios as being indicative of what you might expect. A lot of the countries with equality suffer badly from brain drain. Those that stay can have a job if they want it. Those that have the gumption to leave the country can easily make 3-4 times as much in a year. I suspect but I don't have proof that men are more likely to work abroad in general. 75% of H1B visas are for males.



In the midwest of the U.S., you can get paid pretty handsomely for some job. Especially, if you take the cost of living into account. If you can do the job and even if you can't, someone will give you the job. Compare that to metros with way too many STEM graduates.

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[beej67]

Thanks SparWeb. I linked that article earlier, but I think the link may have gotten lost in the shuffle.

I'm surprised Pamela didn't find it on her google search. When I drop "The countries with the highest female STEM participation are middle eastern countries" into Google, it's the second hit. This could quite possibly be an artifact of how Google tailors people's search results to their political biases. When I put that phrase into google, this is my second hit:

https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/n...-not-look-like-president-trumps/507-588612652

which states:

"Suggested stories are selected by computer algorithms based on your past activity on Google," the company says.

In other words, we are so far down the rabbit hole in 2019 that a thread full of totally rational people can have extreme disagreements about a topic purely because Google is feeding us all different starting data, and we're all equally and properly applying logic to a different set of givens. This is a major problem with the divisiveness of modern discourse, by the way. Imagine how nasty this very discussion would be if it were among non-engineers.

Back on topic. The Atlantic article references this study:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719?journalCode=pssa

The graph from the Atlantic article is less than ideal, because they don't label the Y axis at all (which by the way is the gender gap ratio) and they don't show an R^2 for the trendline. But presuming the data pool is reasonably well correlated linearly, as the study suggests, we see two important things:

1) Seven of the top eight countries in the world in terms of women in STEM are Muslim, and the outlier in that group is Vietnam. (which, fun fact, is surprisingly close to 0% Muslim)
2) Six of the bottom seven countries in the world in terms of women in STEM are European socialist democracies with high gender equality. The outlier in this group is Chile.
2b) If we widen the bottom group to 15 countries, 12 are European social democracies, and only one (Qatar) is Muslim.

While I understand the thinking behind this:

Until the playing field is truly level, and all biases are truly removed can we then determine whether a 50/50 ratio is plausible.

...the bias argument simply doesn't fit the data. From the study's abstract:

A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures in less gender-equal countries promote girls’ and women’s engagement with STEM subjects.

Which is similar to this phrase from hokie66:

The Scandinavian outliers have generous social welfare systems, so women don't need to strive so hard to achieve their desired lifestyles

Which is another way of saying this:

If you apply Occam's Razor, the simplest cleanest explanation is that in places where your income is the least tied to your occupation, women choose STEM the least. When the money doesn't matter, they largely choose professions that have to do with people instead of things, on a statistical basis. Because of scientifically measurable biological differences in the statistical distributions of personality traits. Not because of "society" or whatever.

It's a choice thing. Women choose STEM more when the money gives them more incentive, and would choose STEM less if the money didn't matter.

That's of course not to say "all." My wife is an engineer, and my best female friend was an engineer, before she decided to become a housemom instead. I also know four other women from my university days with engineering degrees. Only one is an engineer, and she is a talented one. Several are housemoms who never even began down the engineering path. The housemoms could have certainly been great engineers if they chose to do so, but I doubt they chose housemom due to sexism in the workplace. Most of them were never even exposed to the workplace. Now I will grant those are all anecdotes, not data, but the data is above and seems to match up.

Now I happen to think there is some cultural stuff going on, but not on a "society at large" level, but rather at a business level. And not necessarily with sexism either. I'm incredibly fortunate that I run my own business. My wife is currently dying of cancer, and we have two small children, so the uncertainty of that situation caused me to explore entering the job market recently. What I discovered, basically, was that there were zero engineering firms willing to work with a single parent's schedule. If I went back to work for a big firm, I would be earning money to pay a nanny, instead of raising my kids myself. This trap I find myself in, is the same trap that all single parents find themselves in, and 80% of single parents are women. So that has got to figure in the STEM gap somewhere. In fact, it may very well figure into not only our STEM gap domestically, but also the STEM gap in the graph, because there are very, very few single moms in Muslim countries and quite a lot of single moms in Scandinavia. Quite honestly I'm surprised the researchers didn't pick up on this possible confounder.

Look at this:

Holy crap, it even explains the Chile outlyer, and why Costa Rica is in there with the Nordic countries.

Someone should do a study on this.

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[IRstuff]

That graph is perhaps a bit misleading, since there are other cultural issues mentioned in the Yale article, namely that "out of wedlock" is not synonymous with "single parent" as shown in the other graph from the same article. It shows that less than 20% of all children live with only a single parent; the two graphs are not necessarily consistent with each other, since one describing births only.

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/sites/default/files/images/chamie-chartPicture3-500px.png

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[beej67]

This is very true IRStuff. I had a hard time finding graphs that showed Chile and Costa Rica, which were shown on the scatter plot from the prior study. When I found that one it was a "eurika."

What we'd really need, is a good data set specifically of single female parent ratio that included the same countries in the APS study. I'm not even sure that data is available for Middle Eastern countries. Ideally we'd also need single male parent ratio as a confounder.

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[Sparweb]

purely because Google is feeding us all different starting data...

Lesson: stop relying on Google to find everything for you.

As for the rest, about single parents and stuff... I can't sort out all the variables. A lot of moving parts. I think I see what you're saying, but the logic doesn't seem complete. Perhaps because even the level of confusion you've thrown upon it is still over-simplified?

I would grant that the inflexibility of many workplaces will be a factor motivating women to leave the workforce once they have children. The difficulty with that is showing how much that's a contributing factor, instead of just inducing it, like we have. And trying to make comparable data from different countries on the same subject... swimming in uncertainty again.

No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
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[Sparweb]

I found this today:
Gapminder

Which is packed with information (seems to be mostly stuff published by the UN or its many child agencies).
Data can be exported and/or plotted in any combination. Lots of statistics related to gender equality, so any of you looking for facts to support your theory, go right ahead!

(we'll be checking on your claims, tho)

No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
STF

 

[beej67]

As for the rest, about single parents and stuff... I can't sort out all the variables. A lot of moving parts.

Yep.

Sorting out variables in systems with a lot of moving parts is almost literally the point of a multivariate analysis. All I'm saying is that I don't think the multivariate analyses in this space are as robust as they need to be, and the above is one variable that is very likely significant. Further, anyone claiming "women in STEM" is a bivariate problem, whether they're blaming "sexism" or "women's choice" or whatever else, is a snake oil salesman. If rational people were to discuss this problem, they'd need to put all the causes on the table, establish a truly robust data set, and do the math properly.



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