xkcd

by **Роберт** » Fri Apr 29, 2011 9:48 pm UTC

HungryHobo wrote:I sense some extremely mobile goalposts there.
So are you claiming now that there are no biological differences full stop or that there are no differences without at least one exception to the rule?

I have no idea who you are addressing here. Care to elaborate?

by **Jessica** » Fri Apr 29, 2011 9:56 pm UTC

I never said there were no biological differences.

What I believe is, most behavioral and (especially) cognitive differences between the sexes probably aren't biologically determined (where by determined I mean the primary cause is biology, something innate, or physical). I also believe that physical differences of course are determined (in the most part) by biology.

Does that help explain where I'm coming from? That was all I was trying (and clearly failing) to say.

Then, I was looking for studies (which I know I've seen) which have also come to similar conclusions. Because I'm just a layman, and not an academic with access to academic archives. But, this thread has come quite far from that original intent. I've also achieved some of my original goals, and am no longer looking.

by **stevey_frac** » Sat Apr 30, 2011 12:56 am UTC

Jessica wrote:
What I believe is, most behavioral and (especially) cognitive differences between the sexes probably aren't biologically determined (where by determined I mean the primary cause is biology, something innate, or physical). I also believe that physical differences of course are determined (in the most part) by biology.

Agreed. It's been said before, and it will be said again, but as much as we love to argue over the differences, and their causes, the variability within groups is far larger than the variability between groups.

by **collegestudent22** » Fri May 06, 2011 6:46 am UTC

Jessica wrote:Also, arguing against "There aren't many women in field X, thus they must not like it" meme.

It's actually easier now for a woman to become an engineer (in that there are organizations, such as the Society for Women Engineers, that exist solely to advocate for and help women become engineers). However, the vast majority of engineering students are still men. Care to explain that, other then women (in general) don't particularly drift to engineering and applied science? Or theoretical science, for that matter?

by **jules.LT** » Fri May 06, 2011 8:41 am UTC

collegestudent22 wrote:Care to explain that

Mostly educational bias and social pressure?

by **collegestudent22** » Fri May 06, 2011 9:29 am UTC

Educational bias? Like what? My female Electronics professor is biased towards male engineers, now?

Social pressure is possible, but that's why I included the SWE - social pressure is not nearly as big a factor as it was a couple decades ago, yet the percentage of female engineers hasn't increased all that much. I contend that it is much more due to biological differences between males and females, of which there are plenty.

Physically, men tend to be stronger, bigger, have thicker skin and skulls, build muscle more easily, bruise less easily, and have a lower threshold of pain to the extremities. Women, on the other hand, have greater access to the right brain for problem solving (more connecting neurons), are better at multi-tasking, and better memory recall, not to mention the obvious childbirth and care differences. My technical writing class pointed to quite a few studies that showed a difference in how men and women communicate and work together as well.

Psychologically, women have different interests then men, even at a very young age. Unless you can claim that young (like 3 or 4) boys gravitating towards sports and hot wheels, while young girls tend to favor dolls and "dress up" is due to the immense social pressure built up since they learned to understand words a year or so ago?

by **Angua** » Fri May 06, 2011 9:37 am UTC

collegestudent22 wrote:Educational bias? Like what? My female Electronics professor is biased towards male engineers, now?

Social pressure is possible, but that's why I included the SWE - social pressure is not nearly as big a factor as it was a couple decades ago, yet the percentage of female engineers hasn't increased all that much. I contend that it is much more due to biological differences between males and females, of which there are plenty.

Physically, men tend to be stronger, bigger, have thicker skin and skulls, build muscle more easily, bruise less easily, and have a lower threshold of pain to the extremities. Women, on the other hand, have greater access to the right brain for problem solving (more connecting neurons), are better at multi-tasking, and better memory recall, not to mention the obvious childbirth and care differences. My technical writing class pointed to quite a few studies that showed a difference in how men and women communicate and work together as well.

Psychologically, women have different interests then men, even at a very young age. Unless you can claim that young (like 3 or 4) boys gravitating towards sports and hot wheels, while young girls tend to favor dolls and "dress up" is due to the immense social pressure built up since they learned to understand words a year or so ago?

Yes, actually, that is the claim. Studies have shown a tremendous difference in how a young child is treated depending on if it is dressed in pink, blue or yellow (as it is pretty much impossible to tell the sex of a young child without external clues). Children are also given toys and tv shows which the parents (who are generally gender biased) give to them - and so they learn to like those (eg if your parents have never given you a doll, and always given you cars to play with, and tv shows about cars to watch, then you are more likely to choose a car over a doll no-matter what your sex).

Also, someone on these fora linked a comic that showed why women aren't engineers due to the difference between being given dolls and bricks, but I can't find it.

by **collegestudent22** » Fri May 06, 2011 9:56 am UTC

Angua wrote:
Psychologically, women have different interests then men, even at a very young age. Unless you can claim that young (like 3 or 4) boys gravitating towards sports and hot wheels, while young girls tend to favor dolls and "dress up" is due to the immense social pressure built up since they learned to understand words a year or so ago?

Yes, actually, that is the claim. Studies have shown a tremendous difference in how a young child is treated depending on if it is dressed in pink, blue or yellow (as it is pretty much impossible to tell the sex of a young child without external clues). Children are also given toys and tv shows which the parents (who are generally gender biased) give to them - and so they learn to like those (eg if your parents have never given you a doll, and always given you cars to play with, and tv shows about cars to watch, then you are more likely to choose a car over a doll no-matter what your sex).

Also, someone on these fora linked a comic that showed why women aren't engineers due to the difference between being given dolls and bricks, but I can't find it.

According to the article, this study showed an inherent bias was possible. Even the youngest children, at only nine months, went for the gender-typed toys and colors. Some instances show such a bias in chimps, as well.

by **HungryHobo** » Fri May 06, 2011 10:12 am UTC

even with that: infants boys focus more on objects and girls more on faces if you use gaze monitoring and attention span etc.

"Of course, these preferences might be attributable to differences in the way adults handle or play with boys and girls. To eliminate this possibility, Baron-Cohen and his students went a step further. They took their video camera to a maternity ward to examine the preferences of babies that were only one day old. The infants saw either the friendly face of a live female student or a mobile that matched the color, size and shape of the student's face and included a scrambled mix of her facial features. To avoid any bias, the experimenters were unaware of each baby's sex during testing. When they watched the tapes, they found that the girls spent more time looking at the student, whereas the boys spent more time looking at the mechanical object. This difference in social interest was evident on day one of life--implying again that we come out of the womb with some cognitive sex differences built in. "

But if you want to believe that there is zero difference then just insert some hand waving that even at 1 day old and with experimenters which don't know the sex of the child you've already fallen to social pressure.

by **collegestudent22** » Fri May 06, 2011 11:15 am UTC

If it was all social pressure, there would be no engineers. Think about it. Engineers do not fulfill the male stereotype of being athletic, tough, and "manly", nor do they fit the female stereotype of a "proper lady". So, unless you also hypothesize that females are more susceptible to social pressure (which would also be a biological difference), then social pressure should virtually equal out.

by **jules.LT** » Fri May 06, 2011 11:19 am UTC

That day 1 experiment sounds interesting. Do you have a link?

To make things even harder to contradict, did they check that the mothers didn't know the sex of the baby before birth?

by **HungryHobo** » Fri May 06, 2011 11:45 am UTC

"Sex differences in human neonatal social perception"
Infant Behavior and Development, 2001, 23, 113-118.

I'm not aware if they controlled for the mother knowing the sex of the child before birth.
That does start to push it though: that you're being conditioned while still inside a womb.
perhaps the parents go to a lot of monster truck rallies if they think they have a boy.

by **jules.LT** » Fri May 06, 2011 12:10 pm UTC

I wouldn't exclude a change of attitude of the mother who knows her baby's gender, but I'm not saying it's a significant impact either. Just checking all the loose ends :-P

Thanks for the reference :wink:

by **Enuja** » Fri May 06, 2011 12:29 pm UTC

collegestudent22, I suggest you read Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine, published in 2010. It addresses your arguments very well and very directly.

The experiment from the lab of Simon Baron-Cohen that HungryHobo describes is only one study, with a fairly small sample size, and not everyone is at all convinced that the experiment was properly blind. The experimenter (one person), who shook the mobile or showed their face, was probably not sufficiently blind to the gender of the baby. They did this in the babies' room, with all of the normal gender cues that very possibly influenced the experimenter's shaking of the mobile and smiling. Also, the babies were shown these things in turn instead of at the very same time, which has an effect on how interested a baby is in something. For this experiment to be the basis of any large, important assumptions about gender, it needs to be done a bunch more times, with slight methodological differences, larger sample sizes, and better blinding. It is possible that infants have different attention preferences depending on gender (but, if I remember correctly, toddler's appear not to, so that's more than a bit weird), but this experiment isn't enough to convince me of that.

I don't know about the specific studies that collegestudent22 linked, but these sorts of studies were also summarized and discussed in Delusions of Gender. How do we know what type of toys are "boy" toys and what types are "girl" toys? How are cars and guns "boy" toys? Clearly, cars and guns, being technological inventions, are social constructions. The idea, existence, and category are social. The things that toy cars do -- wheels roll nicely on the ground as you push with you hand, roll down a slope -- are not the things that adults do with real cars -- drive them from inside, fiddle with the mechanics, revel in the industrial design beauty of the exterior (okay, you can this last with toys, do, but does anyone think this is why cars are boy toys?) are not the same things kids get out of toys. As your link says, previous studies haven't found consistent differences in gender play. Why did this one find differences? How big were the differences? I'd need to read the actual experiment (and a bunch of the other studies) to know if it is convincing or not, and I'm not going to do that right now.

The chimp study is interesting, especially how this stick-play is entirely cultural. The (human socially acculturated) scientists said they'd thought that the girls were carrying the sticks more often, and look, they found that they were right! What's the sample size? Are their gender differences in play in any other chimp groups? How is stick carrying related to moving vs. facial attention in infants? In other words, what's the biological basis across this studies, and is it consistent? At what age do chimp adolescents start to undergo puberty? At what age were these chimps doing stick carrying?

I'm not actually interested in discussing these questions in this thread (or, probably, on this board), because this is the detail and the nitty gritty where I figure out if I'm convinced about science articles. Often, I am not, and, often future research shows where the flaw was in an older study and, especially, the interpretation of that study.

Delusions of Gender has a great section about computer science professionals and the culture of being a nerd. Who is expected to do CS? Nerds. What gender are nerds? Male. In the united states, there is this large cultural expectation that CS is a personality instead of a career, that CS folks are expected to be obsessed with CS and not have many other interests (expect a few other specifically nerdy things), and are expected to spend enormous amounts of time on their job. In other cultures, where even the male CS professionals treat it as a career instead of a cultural identity and obsession, men and women have much much more equal presence in the field.

Engineering preferences might very well be working the same way. Girls are socially expected to be well rounded, to think about a social life in addition to a career or single obsession. Our self-stated preferences are shaped and altered by the society around us (there are lots of good, interesting studies about this), including by whether we check a gender box before we take a career preference test. You can find different gender preferences about getting into the same fields, depending on whether you describe them with words and names for skill sets associated with men or with women (despite the fact that the tasks of the profession are the same no matter which gender associations you put in the description).

by **jules.LT** » Fri May 06, 2011 12:57 pm UTC

Enuja, your argument to say that this study is insufficient is convincing, but I'm afraid that appealing to this book is counter-productive: its agenda is too clear. As fine as the individual arguments may be, we can't trust it to include all of the relevant facts (same as with a book which tries to show that there are strong biological differences).

by **HungryHobo** » Fri May 06, 2011 1:16 pm UTC

People keep pointing at that without any actual quotes.
Yes, we get it.
there is a book by someone who believes that gender has no biological effect on our brains... somehow.

Without actual material it's as much a support for your point as someone pointing at The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe and saying "I suggest you read that".(apparently The Field is actually very convincing, it's easy to be convincing when you mention only flawed studies against your position, only mention your own sides interpretations and neglect to mention the gaping holes or problems with your own sides experiments and arguments and frame academics on your side of the argument being fired for fraud and misconduct as Being Silenced For Their Beliefs)

"shaking of the mobile and smiling"

With the mobile I believe the point was that it was moved mechanically so that it would have a jerky unnatural movement.
The ones deciding how long the infant payed attention to something were only watching tapes which had been reviewed first for indicators of the babys gender.

depending on whether you describe them with words and names for skill sets associated with men or with women (despite the fact that the tasks of the profession are the same no matter which gender associations you put in the description).

This is pretty trivial, have you ever read a job description?
there's a million ways to describe the same job, many so weird that non native english speakers often have trouble working out what the job actually is.
If you emphasis some aspects of a job in the description which tends to particularly interest once group you'll get more interest from them.

To build on something you mentioned if you talk a lot in the description about working with machines you'll get more interest from the people who like machines while if you use a lot of words associated with caring and interacting with people you'll get the people who are more interested in the human interaction side.

by **KestrelLowing** » Fri May 06, 2011 1:52 pm UTC

With respect to why there are fewer females in engineering:

I think I can explain why there is a smaller percentage of women employed as engineers than there are in degree programs: Kids.

This society still says that a woman who is a stay-at-home mom is desirable, while a stay-at-home dad is typically pitied and their 'manhood' is questioned. It's not right. I wish that a stay-at-home dad was just a desirable as a stay-at-home mom. However for some reason, either social or genetic, I think that if I have children, I'm supposed to be the primary caregiver because I'm female. I wish I didn't think that way, but thought in a more equal manner, but culture takes a LONG time to change.

So, if a husband and engineer wife want to have children the generally socially acceptable things are (A) Both work full time and pay for full-time child care (B) the wife becomes a stay-at-home mom or (C) the wife gets a part time job and pays for part time child care.

(C) is problematic in engineering because there are hardly any part time engineering jobs. Also, even if the couple decide to look at the problem economically, the man usually makes more. I don't know if this is still true if the wife is in engineering.

As to why women wouldn't choose engineering in the first place:

It's amazing how much stigma there is with females being interested in STEM fields. I was involved with FIRST Lego League in 5th-8th grade. In fifth grade, we had enough males and females to make two teams and it was just easiest to split it along gender lines.

I specifically remember the boys team telling us that we'd be lucky if we got second in the school. There were only two teams. We ended up kicking their butts and continuing onto state. That instance was probably just trash talking, but it did seem to have a little bit of a gender reason towards it. After all, the majority of the girls hadn't really played with Legos all that much before.

As our team continued, we always seemed to be the focus of local news because we were an "All Girls Team". Do you know how frustrating that is? No one even focused on the fact that we were just a really good team (2nd in state once, 1st in state twice, 3rd in the world once) - just on the fact that we were girls. I remember one interview where the reporter asked something along the lines of "So how is it to be a robotics team that's all girls?" We replied "It doesn't matter. We're just a good robotics team that happens to be all girls." Yet what was the headline? "GIRL POWER!" *shudder*

In high school I continued onto the FIRST Robotics Competition. There is a 4 person drive team for that competition - two that manipulate the robot, one coach, and one human player. Our initial robot driver couldn't come to a competition so we used the backup driver who happened to be a girl. I was operating the arm that year, our coach was female, and the human player was also female. Everyone assumed we had to be an all girls team because the drive team were all female. Once again, a huge deal was made out of it and it bugged the crap out of me. We just happened to be girls.

So I guess I was very annoyed by being treated differently - even if it was in a positive light. Being an outsider it always frustrating. I can see how someone who wasn't as positive about going into engineering as I was would be slightly discouraged by that - always seen as female, never seen for their actual abilities.

by **gmalivuk** » Fri May 06, 2011 1:57 pm UTC

The thing is, even if there is some statistically significant difference between the average amount of attention male and female infants give to different things, it would be absurd to then dismiss the following decade or two of socialization when discussing the dearth of women in STEM fields. Far more likely is that there might be a small difference to begin with, and socialization (starting with decisions by adults to buy gender-based toys for a child that would be equally happy to play with pretty much anything) serves to amplify those differences throughout the next dozen or so years.

If there are differences at birth, they're probably about as small as most other average differences. Which is to say, variation within each gender is typically greater than the difference between them. But because there's any (perceived) difference at all, parents and friends and teachers act to enforce the difference, and subtly encourage certain directions for boys and other directions for girls. (Along the lines of the SMBC comic posted earlier, I remember hearing an interview with Phil Plait about how some toy store was selling telescopes for kids, and the "girl" telescope was pink, as well as being quite a bit less powerful. What possible motivation could there have been for making it weaker, apart from a stupid assumption that girls wouldn't care as much about the strength of the telescope?)

KestrelLowing wrote:I think I can explain why there is a smaller percentage of women employed as engineers than there are in degree programs: Kids.

You think engineering is the only field that makes it difficult to be a parent? Your argument might apply to a general disparity in the workforce, but it doesn't explain why engineering, more than almost any other field, has such a disproportionate number of men in it.

by **KestrelLowing** » Fri May 06, 2011 2:24 pm UTC

gmalivuk wrote:
KestrelLowing wrote:I think I can explain why there is a smaller percentage of women employed as engineers than there are in degree programs: Kids.
You think engineering is the only field that makes it difficult to be a parent? Your argument might apply to a general disparity in the workforce, but it doesn't explain why engineering, more than almost any other field, has such a disproportionate number of men in it.

Oh, no! Definitely not! However, as far as I have seen, there tends to be less part time opportunities in STEM fields than elsewhere. If you look at the majority of female-dominated jobs (I actually couldn't think of any - googled and came up with this Dutch site. It's pretty interesting) like secretaries, retail, hairdressing, etc. it's pretty easy to find part time options, or they can have a schedule that isn't your typical 8-5 (minimizing child care costs). With the more equal professions like doctors and (high school) teachers, accountants, etc. there's still more options for part/unusual time or they make quite enough money that paying for childcare really isn't a huge deal (I suppose this could be argued for some STEM jobs as well, but doctors and lawyers on average make more than engineers).

As to why engineering has so many fewer, I totally agree with you - while there may be a small difference to begin with, I think that the majority is socialization. But, my first part was just to examine why there aren't equal proportions of women in STEM degree programs and STEM industry.

by **jules.LT** » Fri May 06, 2011 3:05 pm UTC

Just wanted to post this link to a review of literature on sex differences in empathy:
Sex differences in empathy and related capacities

Spoiler:

I'd be interested in more day-1 no-human-involved studies.
I personally expect maybe a slight difference, but not significant enough to be easily detected, so imaginary differences are likely to drown them out.

by **Enuja** » Fri May 06, 2011 3:07 pm UTC

I wouldn't have recommended Delusions of Gender again if I hadn't suspected that collegestudent22 hadn't read page three and was therefore unware of the recommendation, combined with the fact that Delusions of Gender directly addresses the argument collegestudent22 was making. All of the reviews of the book, even by people who strongly disagree with the conclusions, describe it as being extremely well researched and from someone who knows the field well and accurately. Some people claimed that the book doesn't focus on things that there is good, convincing research about gender differences, but since collegestudent22 was talking about career choices, that concern is completely irrelevant.

HungryHobo, Cordelia Fine does not think that there are no sex differences in brain and psychology; just that current research has not separated out confounding variables. Cordelia Fine strongly believes that there are morphological differences between men's and women's brains, both from biology and from culture (because what we do with our brains physically changes them): she just doesn't know what differences (direction, size, or varience) there are in human psychology depending on sex and gender, independent of cultural context. Fine doesn't frame "her side" as being persecuted for their beliefs: she mostly talks about how important culture is to how all of us think. She claims that psychology is complicated and assumptions sway us more than most people admit. Mostly Fine has popular psychology writers in her crosshairs, not researchers. One exception is Simon Baron-Cohen, who Fine believes is an excellent autism researcher and a terrible gender researcher.

Yes, I know the people deciding how long the infant payed attention to the face and mobile were denied any gender cues, but if the bias is already in the infant's behavior, because of the experimenter's unconscious bias, that's pretty useless. And Connellan did show her face and shake the mobile herself: it's just that the movement was mechanical because the mobile was mechanical, not because the mobile was being shaken by a machine.

Some people say that men and women prefer different jobs, therefore the difference in employment between men and women is biological, not cultural. This argument is invalid, because there are strong cultural effects on employment preference, that strongly interact with cultural gender expectations. As it happens, if you describe a job as being about caring, you'll get more women applicants, even when there is no difference in caring between men and women, because people know that there is supposed to be a difference in caring between men and women. This is not a trivial hole in the argument that men want to be engineers more, therefore men and women are inherently, biologically different.

Listen to gmalivuk's argument. We know that social effects are hugely important. Pointing to the end-result, and saying that some of it has got to be biological, is not a logical argument. It's quite possible that there are some biological differences that make women on average better at things we currently think men are better at. It's possible that all of the cultural differences are magnifications of miniscule, average differences, but that doesn't mean that the cultural attitudes aren't a problem, or that we know what the biological differences are.

by **HungryHobo** » Fri May 06, 2011 5:53 pm UTC

Enuja wrote:Some people say that men and women prefer different jobs, therefore the difference in employment between men and women is biological, not cultural. This argument is invalid, because there are strong cultural effects on employment preference, that strongly interact with cultural gender expectations. As it happens, if you describe a job as being about caring, you'll get more women applicants, even when there is no difference in caring between men and women, because people know that there is supposed to be a difference in caring between men and women. This is not a trivial hole in the argument that men want to be engineers more, therefore men and women are inherently, biologically different.

And some people say that there is no difference whatsoever and don't even consider the possibility that small biological differences that may lead to one group being vaguely more interested by different categories of things can then be amplified by the simple fact that you put more time in and your peers put more time in and you get a bit of a feedback loop and you're influenced by them and they're influenced by you and the previous generation and so on.

Nobody is born a kernel programmer but wide eyed interest can turn into deep fascination which is a required first step.

Enuja wrote:Pointing to the end-result, and saying that some of it has got to be biological, is not a logical argument.

Pointing to the end result, the process and the people and saying that none of it is even influenced by biology isn't a logical argument either.
It's an argument from faith.

by **Spambot5546** » Fri May 06, 2011 5:59 pm UTC

Well you've done a great job of disproving whatever phantasmic not-in-this-thread people were advocating that the biology divide between genders has absolutely no affect on a person's life choices and personality. *slow clap*

by **HungryHobo** » Fri May 06, 2011 6:40 pm UTC

Spambot5546 wrote:Well you've done a great job of disproving whatever phantasmic not-in-this-thread people were advocating that the biology divide between genders has absolutely no affect on a person's life choices and personality. *slow clap*

It only seemed fair since Enuja appeared to be doing such a good job attacking the phantasmic not-in-this-thread people who were advocating that nothing could be to do with society or upbringing or that biology is the only cause.
Nobody is pointing only to the end result and insisting that it has to be biological, people are specifically pointing to steps along the way.

got anything of substance to add or was being snarky your only goal?

by **Spambot5546** » Fri May 06, 2011 7:09 pm UTC

With snark that good I feel like I can get by with nothing else. :mrgreen:

by **collegestudent22** » Sat May 07, 2011 12:02 am UTC

Enuja wrote:Listen to gmalivuk's argument. We know that social effects are hugely important. Pointing to the end-result, and saying that some of it has got to be biological, is not a logical argument. It's quite possible that there are some biological differences that make women on average better at things we currently think men are better at. It's possible that all of the cultural differences are magnifications of miniscule, average differences, but that doesn't mean that the cultural attitudes aren't a problem, or that we know what the biological differences are.

I still point to my earlier argument. Were it so that biology played no factor, no one would be in STEM fields. Girls obviously have social pressures against it, but men have just as many. The "nerd" is derided from the day someone finds out he, for example, prefers to play video games, D&D, or tinker with computers/machines. And success in school is derided by the "manly" through high school, and to some degree in college. If you're under the age of 20, it isn't really socially acceptable to be interested in STEM fields, male or female.

In reality, it is my hypothesis that interests are determined biologically (and some of it is related to gender, more men than women will be interested in X, vice-versa on Y), while social pressures can increase or minimize the effect of that interest (i.e. the individual might suppress the interest to be more "social acceptable").

by **gmalivuk** » Sat May 07, 2011 12:14 am UTC

collegestudent22 wrote:Were it so that biology played no factor, no one would be in STEM fields.

Bullshit. People like money, biological propensity to be truly interested in the work or not.

by **collegestudent22** » Sat May 07, 2011 12:34 am UTC

I only know of a few people that went to college with the express purpose of studying something that would make them lots of money - all in business (to be bankers/etc.), law, or pre-med. STEM fields don't tend to, on average, make as much money as other (some far simpler) fields. They also tend to be more difficult to study, mathematically, then fields that make similar amounts.

by **gmalivuk** » Sat May 07, 2011 12:36 am UTC

Yes, and of course no one would pay even one cent more for a good engineer in a hypothetical world where few people wanted to go into engineering.

by **collegestudent22** » Sat May 07, 2011 12:42 am UTC

Okay, so you nitpicked my argument to death. Or at least modification. There would be very few engineers, none of which would enjoy their work after being socially pressured into being highly averse to STEM fields and "nerdiness".

by **Abgrund** » Sat May 07, 2011 1:12 am UTC

collegestudent22 wrote:It's actually easier now for a woman to become an engineer (in that there are organizations, such as the Society for Women Engineers, that exist solely to advocate for and help women become engineers). However, the vast majority of engineering students are still men. Care to explain that, other then women (in general) don't particularly drift to engineering and applied science? Or theoretical science, for that matter?

From my observation, the number of women with Engineering majors is quite large at the freshman level, maybe even close to parity, but decreases rapidly to about 10% as these girls are exposed to math courses.

by **podbaydoor** » Sat May 07, 2011 1:22 am UTC

Exposed to math courses...and also the social pressures of being women in a traditionally male field. Some of the rants of female nerds in this forum might be enlightening.

by **gmalivuk** » Sat May 07, 2011 1:46 am UTC

The other completely baseless thing collegestudent22 is assuming is that peer discouragement of nerdiness is the one and only social pressure kids face. As if no one also has parents or teachers or real friends who are encouraging them to go into math or science or engineering or whatever.

by **podbaydoor** » Sat May 07, 2011 1:53 am UTC

Also, I'd like to know the number of male students dropping out of engineering as they are exposed to math courses at Abgrund's school.

by **gmalivuk** » Sat May 07, 2011 2:22 am UTC

Well obviously it's less, because men are biologically predisposed to like math better.

'Cause of our savanna ancestors and all that...

by **Abgrund** » Sat May 07, 2011 2:54 am UTC

podbaydoor wrote:Exposed to math courses...and also the social pressures of being women in a traditionally male field.

Absolute nonsense of the most absolute and nonsensical sort. There is nothing male engineering students like better than girls in their classes.

by **podbaydoor** » Sat May 07, 2011 2:57 am UTC

Have you actually listened to any female students on the subject? Statements like that are half the reason why it's frustrating to be a woman in a male field. You're either condescended to or hit on. Much like your behavior in this thread, only you managed to combine the dismissive bullshit with the salacious statement.

by **Abgrund** » Sat May 07, 2011 3:34 am UTC

If you give someone privileges and special treatment merely because of the circumstances of their birth, they will expect it as a right. In fact, some will inevitably come to believe that they deserve even more. Because they are not completely relieved of all burdens, not completely absolved of all responsibility, they feel that they are victims of some mythical "patriarchy" - as, after all, certain exploitive others wish them to believe. Being offered help with homework, or a free meal, by an unassuming, introverted "nerd" ? Why, that's intolerable chauvinism! Unless, of course, the help or the meal is desired, then it's just her due as a woman.

podbaydoor wrote:Have you actually listened to any female students on the subject?

Real ones, in real life, yes - and they often do not hide the fact that they take advantage of their looks and of any privilege they can get, for which I can't really blame them as individuals. Those that whine on message boards about "discrimination", no, and I'm not going to. I don't listen to Louis Farrakhan or Al Jazeera either.

by **The Mighty Thesaurus** » Sat May 07, 2011 3:38 am UTC

Abgrund wrote:If you give someone privileges and special treatment merely because of the circumstances of their birth, they will expect it as a right. In fact, some will inevitably come to believe that they deserve even more. Because they are not completely relieved of all burdens, not completely absolved of all responsibility, they feel that they are victims of some mythical "feminazi" - as, after all, certain exploitive others wish them to believe.

by **HungryHobo** » Sat May 07, 2011 3:40 am UTC

I don't know about engineering but in comp sci the dropout rate was almost identical for males and females but the initial enrollment was about 1/10th female.
You'd expect the actual dropout rate to be higher for females if it was hostility or other unpleasantness actually within the course that was the problem.

This being in a country where highschool higher math is turning out more girls than guys so it's probably not the math scaring the girls off and the pure math theory courses have a healthy crop of female students.

Indeed most of the really high points courses like medicine are almost exclusively female now with the exception of a handful of the eng courses.
(also note CS is currently an extremely unpopular and thus low points and low "status" course)

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