The New York Times recently ran a long piece exploring the history of women in STEM fields and attempting to explain the ever-present difference between men and women in performance and participation in these fields. The article begins by citing research on perceptions of female aptitude in math and science:
“Researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. “
She shares an anecdote that is supposed to display the prejudice of professors against females in the field, but instead illustrates one valid reason for the bias displayed by the Yale study:
“Other women chimed in to say that their teachers were the ones who teased them the most. In one physics class, the teacher announced that the boys would be graded on the “boy curve,” while the one girl would be graded on the “girl curve”; when asked why, the teacher explained that he couldn’t reasonably expect a girl to compete in physics on equal terms with boys.”
Enter Bayes’ Theorem
Bayes’s theorem is a foundational principle of statistics and probability that allows us to update our estimations about the trueness of a fact based on new evidence. The math of Bayes’ theorem is simple and elegant, and the overarching idea is powerful — we can use evidence in a formalized manner to change the probability that something may be true, and this can often have non-intuitive results.
The classic example of Bayes in action is medical tests — for example, if 1% of women have breast cancer, and a mammogram detects the cancer 80% of the time with a 10% false positive rate, what is the probability that a positive result means the woman has cancer? If a mammogram is positive, the chance of cancer is less than 8% due to the presence of false positives, as well as the low baseline population rate of cancer.
What does this have to do with women and STEM fields? Readers of this site are familiar with the allure that even a plain looking girl can have at the height of her availability and youth. This isn’t just a factor when getting free drinks at the bar – it extends to the classroom, hiring for jobs, treatment in everyday life, and many other areas. Girls in primary and secondary school are judged to be better students, despite boys showing a significant advantage in standardized tests starting around middle school. The article highlights the ways that women are supposedly discouraged by the system, but makes no mention of the advantages they enjoy.
Put simply, women are more likely to be handed accomplishments without having to work for them, both due to the power of their sexuality and as unconscious overcorrection for their supposed disadvantages in opportunity. Given an applicant with a certain pedigree – a Ph.D, say, from a top graduate program —we will have a certain estimation of that person’s intelligence and aptitude. However, the “false positive” rate on those qualifications identifying extremely high aptitude is likely to be much lower for a man, who has not enjoyed the advantages of a feminized education system, catch-up programs, and the hint of his sexuality influencing the evaluations of his superiors.
The bias against hiring a woman whose qualifications are equal to a man, and their subsequent lower salary offer, is simply a use of Bayesian inference. It accounts for the implicit probability that the female will not be as good as her résumé suggests, to say nothing of the chance that she will leave her job to begin a family and leave her employer empty-handed at some point in the future. If, as the example above states, both men and women implicitly behave as if men are superior in math and science, we must give some consideration that this is a possibility.
If Men Are Better At Math/Science — What’s The Big Deal?
The media is encouraged to sing the praises of women where they excel compared to men, and females indeed show demonstrated advantages in many cognitive areas. They are better at language acquisition, picking up on non-verbal cues, and we are all familiar with their evolved capacity for psychological manipulation. Many would suggest that women have better organizational skills. They are incarcerated for violent crimes less often, are less prone to risky behavior, and are more resilient to psychological trauma such as PTSD.
But when it comes to exploring why men have long-demonstrated advantages in certain disciplines, the media scrabbles to ascribe the boogeyman of injustice perpetrated on the protected class. The article is quick to dismiss the repeatable and longitudinal difference between males in females in standardized testing, a long-standing form of evaluation that every college and grad school uses to give out valuable admissions spots. It also does not mention the lack of female representation in technology entrepreneurship, a field that is less dependent on credentials and more on individual drive, creativity, and aptitude.
It could certainly be true that women are discriminated against AND that they are simply less common at the far right of the aptitude bell curve necessary for competitive positions in academia. But I challenge you to find this idea entertained in any mainstream publication despite the mountains of circumstantial evidence. Larry Summers was tarred and feathered for even mentioning research on population dynamics as a potential driver of this difference. The lesson here is that, when you begin an “inquiry” by presupposing the conclusion, you will end up with a politically correct and eminently intellectually dishonest worldview.
Read More: The Anti-Male Commercial
“Researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. “
YES. And this proves what? Absolutely NOTHING! Let’s call this an alleged findinds by the drive-by research community. This shit passes for legitimate science or something?
How about actual field results in a country that started with this nonsense equality bias and spend big money trying such silly things as incentives for women to be engineers and men to be nurses. Guess what? It didn’t fucking work! It couldn’t even work in such a progressive Scandinavian society as Norway. Refer to the Norwegian documentary, Hjernevash (translation: Brainwash)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask
You can try to fit a square peg into a round hole all day long. These guys at Yale had the tenacity to steal otherwise useful money to create imaginary characters in unreal situations and call it research? Norway has proven to the world that men will be men and girls will be girls.
Why to this intellectual terrorists continue to waste society’s time and resources on infantile analysis of Candyland worlds filled with rainbow unicorns. Common already. These guys should get a clue, then get a real job.
Bayesian analysis won’t help anyone who can’t even come to accurate findings using common sense about world around them. In fact, overcomplicating the obvious with even high-school statistical analysis is too much for me.
Ugggh! The futility of the intellectuals and their pursuits. I believe they have hamsters, er, rats, on gold plated lab-quality, publicly funded wheels. When is this nonsense going to end!
“In fact, overcomplicating the obvious with even high-school statistical analysis is too much for me.”
Such clarity!
A dumbass like you is exactly the reason why the intelligensia has power. Either way, your horrific logic basically means that giving power to them is much superior to giving power to you or people like you(note that I am not a fan of academics).
You gotta recognize that 90% of guys are fucking idiots(you being the perfect example). If you take IQ as a typical example(although I don’t like IQ, it serves the basic idea that I’m trying to get across). Although men and women have the same mean IQ, men have a much larger variance, which means more men will be at the very top and at the very bottom. If you take out the men at the very top(say the top 2-5%), then women are much smarter than men since the top few percent skew the distribution so much. I’m also willing to bet that you’re definitely in the bottom 90% of men in terms of intelligence judging by your ignorant (and untrue) comment. Either way, I’m basically saying that the top 5% of people(most of whom will be men), should have control of the society. If what I’m saying sounds elitist, that’s because it is. Do you actually think it’s a good idea to give the bottom 90% of people? The smart guys should run the show dude. You can’t allow betas to get charge of the place; it’s a horrible idea.
How dare you challenge the sanctity of female equality!? Meh, good job.
Honestly, I am in engineering degree right now having to retrain after being dropped to military downsizing. I do have quite a few women in my class, and they do fairly well. In some of the sciences. However, when it comes to engineering projects, they always get put at the speaking table, though they do very little of the actual hard labor. Save for one or two cases. I think that is why so many have gone into IT, and healthcare.
Both fields are rampant with liberals who will cut their own teeth rather than challenge feminist dogma. Overall, healthcare facilities will not just cut their teeth for a woman who is pregnant, they will amputate an financial arm and leg just to ensure “women have equality” in the workplace.
That is the true reason women are so poorly represented in so many fields. I had a woman contact me about buying my franchise, and she quickly, and haughtily, informed me that she was a black woman, and received the same discount on purchase that I did being a veteran who risked life an limb.
Though I applaud any woman who wants to start a business, most don’t. Even in the face of overwhelming tax benefits, subsidies, specialized loans, privileged pre-selection ahead of others for government contracts; most woman will not start a business. They just want the option, then they opt out.
Society cannot survive if all their business owners, doctors, and politicians keep doing that. A reckoning is what feminism faces, and there is not enough federal money to keep being pumped in for it to save face!
I didn’t read the whole NYT article, but was a bit impressed that they at least mention the reality that Summers was getting at before that ambitious lesbian who wanted his job got him fired. Which is that at the extremes of IQ, high and low, men are ridiculously over represented compared to women. Consider the very high levels of minimum IQ required for advanced Physics at MIT, for example. Let’s say an IQ of 160+. At this ultra-high level there are probably 1000’s more men than women at this level of IQ. Nature is that unbalanced.
It’s no use saying the reason you didn’t progress in Physics as a woman is due to some silly “sexist” incident/(s) you’ve pretty much made up in your head. Everybody, whether male or female has a whole truck load of incidents like these that women hold up as evidence of bias. They’re just whinging. It might simply be that you’re not smart enough to understand the unbelievably complicated maths and relationships between phenomena that is Physics and other STEM fields.
Black Knight makes an interesting point that the truth may even be the opposite. That younger women are actually ascribed more ability than they have because young women are evolutionarily valuable. Not sure what to make of that. Will have to think some more.
They don’t even believe in IQ
I’m not sure they even believe in inherent human differences
We’re all the same
We’re all the same
We’re all the same
We’re all the same
That’s only if you believe that smartness can’t be developed.
Which it can.
intelligence is more inherited than developed through time, you either have the IQ level from birth or you dont. If you have great cognitive skills from you genetics you will definitely surpass those who are born with lesser cognitive skills. Yes people can learn and acquire knowledge but ig ur brain cant understand a concept no matter how much you try it will not change.
I didn’t read the whole NYT article, but was a bit impressed that they at least mention the reality that Summers was getting at before that ambitious lesbian who wanted his job got him fired. Which is that at the extremes of IQ, high and low, men are ridiculously over represented compared to women. Consider the very high levels of minimum IQ required for advanced Physics at MIT, for example. Let’s say an IQ of 160+. At this ultra-high level there are probably 1000’s more men than women at this level of IQ. Nature is that unbalanced.
It’s no use saying the reason you didn’t progress in Physics as a woman is due to some silly “sexist” incident/(s) you’ve pretty much made up in your head. Everybody, whether male or female has a whole truck load of incidents like these that women hold up as evidence of bias. They’re just whinging. It might simply be that you’re not smart enough to understand the unbelievably complicated maths and relationships between phenomena that is Physics and other STEM fields.
Black Knight makes an interesting point that the truth may even be the opposite. That younger women are actually ascribed more ability than they have because young women are evolutionarily valuable. Not sure what to make of that. Will have to think some more.
“the teacher announced that the boys would be graded on the “boy curve,” while the one girl would be graded on the “girl curve” . . .”
If this anecdote actually happened, based on my years of experience in physics class rooms, labs, in the field with astronomers, archeologists and marine biologists, he was teasing the boys because the girl was the best in the class.
Context or it didn’t happen.
Please not this again. The majority of college students are women. Girls
are encouraged everywhere to go into science and given affirmative
action at the top engineering schools yet year after year it remains
mostly boys. Please wake up and please that its nothing more than a
personal choice. Even among smart math oriented girls most of them don’t
want these careers. Its really that simple and nothing more. So stop
all the hand wringing and next write about the crisis of why all dental
hygienists are women(good pay and predictable hours) rather than
dentists.
Men are associated with math and science, but also with conditions like autism and autistic savant, which some scientists believe are conditions associated with an extreme male brain ( read psychiatrist Simon Baron Cohen’s papers, and yes he is cousin to Borat). As surprise, surprise, women want the science and maths bit, but not the autism bit.
Also some women are autistic, but they generally are smarter and less bitchier than their female counterparts. They, in my opinion, deserve stem more than the “I fucking love science” groups
Aside from a few token herbs like PZ Meyers, feminism hasn’t caught on in math and science because they’re fields where the rubber hits the road. You’re either right or you’re wrong. Feminists value “lived experiences” and “alternate readings” above all. The purview of science is totally foreign to them because it deals with actual verifiable facts, not loose interpretations. Feminists are used to writing about their personal experience and being patted on the back by their sisters and professors, in stark contrast to the world of science where there are canonical facts and theories that can definitely be proven right or wrong.
There’s a lot of feminists writing *about* women in science, but few of them actually step up to the plate and try to earn a science degree. When they do, they’re immediately flushed out by hardcore classes like differential equations, and they immediately try to point the finger at the white patriarchs who are trying to keep them out, as opposed to taking even a shred of responsibility for their shitty performance.
Turns out performing science isn’t as easy as reblogging stuff from “I fucking love science” on Facebook. The women in science who succeed are genuinely interested in the subject and rarely want special treatment. I won’t go as far to say that sexism doesn’t exist in science, but it’s no coincidence that the women who’ve succeeded on their own merit aren’t typically feminists.
Also, if you’ve never read Richard Dawkins’ brilliant takedown of feminist pseudoscience, check it out regardless of how you feel about Dawkins or atheism:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html
“The feminist ‘philosopher’ Luce Irigaray is another who gets whole-chapter treatment from Sokal and Bricmont. In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton’s Principia (a “rape manual”), Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a “sexed equation”. Why? Because “it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us”… you do not have to be a physicist to smell out the daffy absurdity of this kind of argument”
Carl Sagan once said there are only two reason why university profesors have tendency to expres their thoughts (even the most complicated stuff) in a complicated manner:
1. They want us to think they are smarter then us;
2. They don’t understand what they are talking about.
I’d just add one more thing: it could be both
Stay well
I wholeheartedly agree. Rather, clarity of expression signals intelligence to me.
Yup, this is all true. Feminist and their boy-toys (which includes many professors) look at science and see a lack of women and attribute this to discrimination. In reality, it’s simply because the women haven’t put in the effort, or that those professors who did take female students couldn’t put up with their flakiness. On the other hand, the women who *do* put in the effort are just as good as the guys and no one can contest that. But it’s false that you have to somehow prove yourself more if you’re a girl. It might have once been the case that women were discriminated against in science (decades ago, but that was mostly due to cultural issues and not sexism) but that’s just not the case anymore.
I am a woman majoring in physics as an undergrad at University of Chicago. I also have a mild case of autism that results in an obsession with mathematics. I’m going to jump in here and say that most women in my program will fail out because they don’t find the concepts fascinating and feel they need “better study habits.” Whereas I, and my male counterparts, are genuinely interested in the topics. I could spend an entire weekend forgoing social activities in lieu of studying, and I’d be completely content. And I have, probably every other weekend. I feel like the reason there are so few women in STEM fields is because it doesn’t appeal to us on an evolutionary level. Women are typically less logically-oriented, and that’s crucial in STEM.
Well, all STEM fields except bio. Bio is for pussies.
wow u took the words out of my mind ive been preaching this all my life. And its true u have to have some type of passion for stem degrees and the courses they teach or ur going to fail. I love science and math im not a genius at all of math, i did good at advance algebra i got straight As but as soon as i got to advance or even pre calculus and triganomitry i was lost. But i have never been lost in biology i have been in love with biology forever im studying biotechnology right now.
I agree on that principle, but more women than ever are entering STEM. It’s really startling how many females there are in science classes. It’s almost a sixty forty ratio of girls to boys in my STEM classes now
I’m actually pleased to hear that. It’s great that women are getting more involved in STEM. Technology is the future and a rising tide lifts all boats. The question is whether that’s going to come from women who are willing to bust their asses to get ahead, or from feminists who think they’re entitled to a Nobel prize just for being a woman.
They’re getting more involved because the Feds are pouring buckets of money into sponsoring efforts to recruit them — and threatening colleges which have too many men in their science programs with Title IX lawsuits and funding cuts.
In a decade or so there will be editorials and pundit pieces wondering why America has lost its scientific lead (and, of course, blaming Christianity and conservatives for the problem). They’ll be particularly mystified because the universities are still cranking out graduates in the technical fields — all young women who obediently discover whatever they’re told.
Meanwhile young men will stay away in droves, or go to other countries and prosper.
Unless things make a drastic change (which may just happen), I’m betting you’re right. And everything else will be to blame…
That’s nice and I completely agree with you, but the reality is they are not going to make it.
I came into my first year at University already taken some sophomore engineering classes(DiffEQ), and l burst out laughing at the other Engineering Freshman that need help with Calculus II or first semester Chemistry. Those classes are jokes compared to higher level courses, so even if they make it through Chemistry, they are still extremely likely to drop out of the higher level courses. At some point I mentally started to pick out the people that werent serious enough, were going to fail classes, and end up having to switch from engineering to Economics or something.
I dont know the exact numbers, but I’m guess that about 1/3 to 1/2 of the newly enrolled engineers wont be graduating as engineers 4 years from now, leaving you with the female/male ratio that is closer to the one visible now.
The graduation rate for engineers in my program is thirty percent. But it’s a bit more understandable, considering how well they bring hell upon engineers to weed them out. Math is the easy part, the science..well it’s not very well instructed or processed. It’s very bureaucratic.
Oh but their about to title IX the f*** out of math. Was talking to my uncle who was hearing about common core. Apparently the right answer is not longer necessary in math. If you can build a compelling case for why you believe (read feel) your answer is correct, the teacher has to accept your wrong answer. It’s literally an A for effort.
My response to my uncle, a civil engineer, do you want to cross a bridge built by one of these people? His response, “Yeah… exactly.” Weep for the future boys, weep for the future.
Common core….Are those the same guys who promote plays about suicide to pre-teens in teh UK?
Guess what? real math is not about knowing what the correct answer is. it’s about using what you already know to show and prove your way to a conclusion.
lolll.
wtf are u stupid math is about being right or wrong, a miscalculation in a NASA rocket or a space launch can be the death of the crew ur clearly not into science or math, the bullshit that you liberal nazis come up with are so pathetic and stupid it just blows my mind
I remember going to an “Intro to Javascript” programming class in college. The first thing the TA told us: if you want to pass this class, you will have to spend at least 20 hours a week at home programming. A girl sitting next to me told me she would drop the class because she would have no free time on the weekends.
The average female can’t tolerate intensive single tasking just like most men hate mufti-tasking jobs. STEM fields require a lot of the former, while social work, health fields, and office drones require the latter.
Exactly right. The reason why there are so many females in the social sciences is because those areas are ambiguous enough to allow irrational concepts like holism and ‘anti-positivism’ to thrive, effectively giving them enough intellectual leeway to rationalize and interpret anything to suit their emotions.
I’m a STEM student at one of the world’s top universities. The vast majority of my female (and a large number of my male) fellow STEM students are feminists, and the female and male students in my, and related, courses are equally highly-achieving. Saying that “female scientists/mathematicians/etc aren’t feminists” is very misrepresentative – it’s more a matter of being less likely to publish anything particularly feminist.
I’m a STEM student at one of the world’s top universities. The vast majority of my female (and a large number of my male) fellow STEM students are feminists, and the female and male students in my, and related, courses are equally highly-achieving. Saying that “female scientists/mathematicians/etc aren’t feminists” is very misrepresentative – it’s more a matter of being less likely to publish anything particularly feminist.
I’m a STEM student at one of the world’s top universities. The vast majority of my female (and a large number of my male) fellow STEM students are feminists, and the female and male students in my, and related, courses are equally highly-achieving. Saying that “female scientists/mathematicians/etc aren’t feminists” is very misrepresentative – it’s more a matter of being less likely to publish anything particularly feminist.
‘I won’t go as far to say that sexism doesn’t exist in science, but it’s no coincidence that the women who’ve succeeded on their own merit aren’t typically feminists.’ Indeed.Spot on. Many women put themselves on the back foot with their own victim mentality.
Commenting here since I can’t find the “Contact us” page.
You guys should seriously cover this story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/gavin-mcinnes-women-workplace_n_4138741.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
Great catch, and that women’s backhanded insults, however intellectual she tried, were the same old same old. You are impotent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Especially her cackling hen of a laugh. Hahahahahahaah, look how ignorant you are. Then she showed him how sexism is done.
The comment section beneath that article is discouraging in the extreme. A painful and tedious parade of the same disingenuous feminist claptrap and white knight faggotry that still obtains throughout most of the public consciousness.
Does anybody else here, in attempting to discuss such things, feel a bit like the Cassandra of myth?
Going through a Cal State U Physics department wasn’t that long ago for me. I had contact with a total of 4 women in that department. Of the 4, only one actually had the aptitude to be there. One of them got shat on by the professors, but she didn’t do much to redeem herself, having repeated one particular upper-division class 3 times. One of them had significant understanding of the subject material, but also clearly used her allure as a young woman to influence her grades. The final one was a complete mystery.
Yes, the professors in general, at least the good ones, clearly understand the score. Yes, some of them can be assholes to people who do not spend the time to pick up the subject matter. But they treat the guys who fail equally as badly as the girls who fail. It just so happens that girls have a harder time, and they know it.
Biologically, there’s clear evidence at this point that women have a greater ability to perceive color differences. No one actually questions this in a hostile manner. When you go through the liberal arts departments of major universities, it’s never a shock that many artistic painters are women, is it? Should women be forced to deal with my shitty attempts at creating colorful art because I feel there’s a bias against men?
Why then are the natural strengths of men so abhorrent to some people as to not be allowed to exist?
the argument is totally false, since women are so much better at having babies and being mothers than men are…. (which just happens to be kinda what keeps the human race going – doh!)
go to any maternity ward and start demanding equal rights
the whole argument for equality is totally fucking pointless….. unless we all become hermaphrodites.
if a woman sets out into the man’s work place, and wants to be treated as an equal fine… she should be permanently sterilized first…and make note of it on her CV…. fair enough…. and men will treat her more than fairly…..especially in intellectual fields…
The problem is outside of STEM you either need to put in some serious dues, or be a risk taker in order to make a middle class living. And career effort is something most women avoid. This will become especially apparent in the next 20 years when the government runs out of other people’s money to pay their parasitic female workforce.
Whenever this topic comes up, I always mention a simple fact. What is the country with the highest rate of female involvement in the STEM fields? No, it’s not any European country, and no it’s definitely not the USA. It’s not even a western country. It’s India. Yup, that’s right, ‘backwards’ India, where sexism is objectively alive and well. If you can answer this question – why does INDIA have more female scientists than, say, an ultra-feminist country like Sweden – you can begin to understand why so few women go into STEM fields in the USA. Until you can answer this question you are just blabbering incoherent nonsense.
Whenever this topic comes up, I always mention a simple fact. What is the country with the highest rate of female involvement in the STEM fields? No, it’s not any European country, and no it’s definitely not the USA. It’s not even a western country. It’s India. Yup, that’s right, ‘backwards’ India, where sexism is objectively alive and well. If you can answer this question – why does INDIA have more female scientists than, say, an ultra-feminist country like Sweden – you can begin to understand why so few women go into STEM fields in the USA. Until you can answer this question you are just blabbering incoherent nonsense.
Rational actors acting in their own interest. I’ve never heard anyone bring up this example, thanks.
Indian women go into STEM to make money… privileged western women just whine about how they’re not part of STEM
Yeah, yeah, sure, but are they any good?
There’s actually a good series which discusses why that is. The gist of it is that the more egalitarian a society is, the more people are free to pursue their actual interests instead of going for whatever will guarantee survival. The series is Norwegian and is called “Hjernevask” (Brainwash) http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x1xv47_BrainwashingInNorway_hjernevask-english/1#video=xp0tg8
WTF is STEM? Stop using abreviations in every article please…
Do a little bit of research. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Emgineering, and Mathematics.
Engineering*. Curse having to type on a small phone keyboard.
“due to the power of their sexuality” – man we western men must be thirsty. I remember the girls in STEM. Even in Applied Economics (the very bottom rung of STEM), they sure didn’t look like the girl in the picture.
The idea that discrimination and natural ability both affect outcomes is evidently too hard to grasp for many feminists. It’s why they try to explain everything away as social constructs. It’s why they believe in unscientific concepts like the blank slate. Because in the end, biological determinism implies inherent inequality, which “sounds kinda mean”, and to the emotional minds, what’s socially unacceptable cannot also be factually correct.
Excellent article and a wonderful piece to provoke critical thinking regarding the differences between the sexes. Thanks for your insight.
Are you a cute chick? Are you a feminist? Are you friends with Jay-Z?
The laws of physics don’t give a fuck.
No science degree for you.
Was a 60 minutes special on the IIT ( Indian institute of technology). The premier engineering/science school in India. Lots of tech zillionaires went to IIT. Graduates can “write their ticket”. IIT is free , 100% state funded but you have to get in. Only 3000 accepted per year. I think millions take the entrance exam. The top 3000 scores get in . That’s it. If you’re in the top 3000 then you’re accepted. Guess what?? Mostly guys. No fucking quotas. That’s how all schools should be.
Lol because people who score the highest on standardized tests are totally the innovators of the next generation.
India is just as bad on the affirmative action racket as America. Only they don’t do it by race/gender. They do it by social caste. A bottom caste person can get a test score that is much lower than a Brahmin and still get into IIT.
Call me naive but I like to believe that if u are good at something then u are good at something regardless of gender. Sure women are dumber at science n men are dumber at languages but separating them so clearly would destroy the chances of those very few that are good at something that is contrary to their gender disposition.
Blackknight dude, you make my promise not to fap a very tough thing with pictures like the one above…
The means of both of the distributions of intelligence between both the genders are the same. The primary difference is because the variance for men is larger. So you see more men at the top and more men at the bottom while females cluster more around the mean. That being said, I’ve met plenty of women who are very intelligent in this regard, but there are simply less of them.
http://logicate.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/larry-summers-and-the-wrong-questions-ad-hominem-and-the-perils-of-searching-for-the-wrong-causal-conclusions/
The above article discusses the Larry Summers incident and sets forth a logical framework for testing causal links in the male/female STEM divide. Anyone is welcome to comment, as long as they discuss the argument itself and keep it strictly logical.
So basically, Larry Summers poses the question, “What if women aren’t biologically equipped to excel in science, or just hate science for some reason we don’t yet understand?”
I suppose that these are both logical questions, and I think the female averseness to STEM careers is easier to explain than the people angrily debating it seem to think. Humans want love, and they want to nurture life. The idea that anyone, woman OR man should view creating life and a loving family as a sacrifice to his personal freedom or success is against evolution and human nature in general. So, that being true, why would any sane woman choose to spend years studying and pursuing a degree in STEM at the expense of her own happiness? Women want to be independent and powerful just as much as men (Trust me, I have a competitive girlfriend who wants to be an engineer and it’s not because she was indoctrinated into feminism, it’s been her passion since high school) but just like men, it’s in order to provide for children. Before this age, women provided by taking care of the home, and men providing by working physically. Neither sex really used math or science in their daily lives, with a few exceptions for those who happened to be very intelligent, curious, AND rich. Now, in the modern age, the traditional roles for men and women are redundant, but women are still seen as valuable for their sexual appeal and ability to be a “homemaker” while for a man, his intellectual abilities and success are sometimes even more important than being handsome or strong. Someone here mentioned that in middle school boys start doing better on tests than girls, and it’s safe to say that with puberty, children start trying to prepare themselves for their important roles as mothers and fathers. It makes sense that a man would study hard and indulge his interest in STEM without giving it a second thought, because he knows his actions will be rewarded by the opposite sex. Girls don’t get the same promise of happiness from learning an intellectual skill. They are rewarded by the opposite sex when they spend their time doing frivolous things to augment their beauty. I don’t exactly know why this is, but it’s probably because men usually have larger egos than women, and I know that when my girlfriend puts on a pretty dress and lets me see her long black hair over her back, it excites me way more than seeing her get an A on her chemistry final. As for women just not having the ability to excel in STEM, I don’t really buy that. Seeing the enthusiasm of the girls I do know who are in TSA and the summer program I go to, and reading about the women who worked their asses off to make difference in the world through STEM, I can’t help but think of Aristotle’s philosophical principal, “A potency without the possibility of actuality destroys nature.” Just as there cannot be an animal with a stomach but no need for food, there can’t be a human with a brain and faculties for knowledge, and also the desire to learn and create that can never be fulfilled. If women weren’t able to be just as successful in STEM, why would women have the mental capacities and desire required to do it? Why wouldn’t they all display disgust in ever learning something with math or critical thinking and if forced to do so, exhibit that they couldn’t. I’ve seen a lot of girls do math, there are as many girls as boys in the advanced math classes I have taken over the course of high school, though slightly less girls than boys in my college. So the question is, “Do females just randomly start to hate STEM (and pretty much any hard, high paying career path) as they grow older or is it because the majority of women would choose to have a loving relationship and a rewarding family over spending many years studying and gaining skills in their field while all of the other girls start to get married?” Even if a girl finishes her degree in her mid twenties, how can she fit getting married, having a baby, and caring for it into the same space of time that she needs to be working her ass off to establish herself. She could work while pregnant, but is it really a good idea to have someone else watch the baby from the day it’s born? In a STEM major you can’t work from home and you can’t make your husband take care of the baby, so….what can she do? I think that dilemma is what’s really keeping women from STEM.
Want to know why the media and especially companies want women in STEM? They beg these women to join, and give them huge scholarships just for having a twat. They offer minority-like status to a gender that is an overwhelming majority on campuses.
If you haven’t guessed it yet. The answer is money. Yes, there is nothing corporations want more then to drive working wages down. Case and point is that women rarely will ask for a high starting salary so they generally are underpaid and drive down wages in every field they monopolize (think teaching and social work). Want to know why wages have stagnated for decades? Among other factors, women in the workforce willing to work for less than men.
Suppose you are competing with an equally qualified woman for a position in a firm that designs microprocessors. You both have 10 years of experience. They ask you how much you want and you say $140k with benefits. When they pose her the same question, she knows she will take tons of time off to crap out crotch monsters and leave at 4pm every day. She will take every single hour of leave possible. Why would she want to promise dedication and 50 hours a week of work? She knows her male colleagues will pick up the slack. She also knows that she can get by on less because daddy, the government, or some schmuck is going to pay for her kids and her crap. So what is she going to utter into the phone to the interviewer? $110k? $120k? $105k? Just bet it will be less.
I wonder why women rarely ask for a high starting salary?
Perhaps because there is already discrimination present in the workplace that stifles such a thought.
It has nothing to do with discrimination. Women don’t negotiate. Women make the choice to make less because women are hard wired to find men to take care of them, which is what they do 99% of the time. Women work less hours (because they are looking for a man to take care of them) and leave the work force for years (because they found a man to take care of them) that men do not. Overall, men are simply harder workers, which results in men being much more competent.
That is a gross generalization. Are you saying that ALL women have no innate desire to be self-sufficient or self-actualize–one of the highest needs of being human?
I love how immediately you change the subject from talking about discrimination, a topic on which you are obviously and provably wrong, to self actualization, a topic on which you probably feel you have a better handle. As you are about to see, you are wrong about that too.
Are you really claiming that a woman cannot be “self actualized” (which BTW is a completely made up BS term) by being with a man? Are you claiming that the only way a woman can “self actualize” is to remain single and alone? Are you really claiming that billions of women that are married cannot ever be self actualized?
Also, even a woman cannot actually think that “self sufficient” is the same thing as “self actualize”.
Yes, I am saying no woman has any innate desire to be self-sufficient and alone. Only the weird cultural conditioning of fact free, fantasy based feminism can instill the belief that happiness (what you probably euphemize as “self actualization”) lies in self-containment, independent of real lasting and deep relationships. All women desire to be in a relationship, as do men. The hardwiring of men and women dictate what their roles are in that relationship. Women desire a man to take care of them and men desire a woman to take care of.
This different hardwiring, i.e., innate biologically based preferences, determine systemic and consistent decisions that are different for each sex. Women are not discriminated against in the workplace. Women make different choices than men at home and at work, leading to different outcomes, obviously.
But weirdly, women lacking critical thinking skills such as you see only the outcomes and weirdly think they are independent of the different individual choices men and women make and mislabel, through sheer laziness (almost a defining quality of feminism), that difference “sexism” or “discrimination”.
It’s like saying that I am discriminated against because I cannot run as far as a marathon runner. You’ve deliberately, but most likely lazily, ignored that I only run a couple times a week and only a couple miles a week, whereas a marathon runner runs ever day and typically runs at least one run over ten miles. Our choices in exercise habits obviously leads to different physical outcomes.
Numbers and citations or it didn’t happen.
Men and boys are better at math than women and girls.
That’s not an answer. That’s just repeating your assumption. If you can’t even bother to make up statistics, all you’re really doing is throwing a fucking temper tantrum because a smart hard-working girl stole the job you think should be yours.
If you can’t even bother to make up statistics,
I understand that you are burdened with being a woman, so critical thinking isn’t a skill that’s in your wheel house, but you do understand that the link in my comment are official SAT statistics, clearly demonstrating women’s inferiority when it comes to math. I didn’t have to “make up statistics” to make my point. My link contains official ones exist all ready and over decades proving my point.
I promised myself I wouldn’t post on this bullshit site anymore, but I might as well throw one more thing on here before I get permanently banned… Two things, actually.
Thing the first: If I take a computerized multiple-choice test and score better than any man in the class (which I have done on several occasions), there’s no way you can tell me that I got that score with my tits.
Thing the second: Sorry to break it to you, guys, but you can’t call me a fat unlovable cow in one article and then claim that I seduced my way into the honor society in another. The logic just doesn’t fly. Either I’m a siren, or I’m a harpy. I can’t be both. Make up your minds.