The Push For Quotas For Women In Science

mlimber writes "The NYTimes has a story about how Congress has quietly begun to press for an equal number of women in the hard sciences and engineering under Title IX, which is best known for mandating numerical equality for boys' and girls' sports for institutions that accept federal funding. The problem is, the article says, it is not merely that women face discrimination from male colleagues, though that is often true, or that they are discouraged from pursuing these fields. Rather, women with aptitude in these areas often simply have other interests and so pursue their education and careers in other fields like law, education, or biology. Opponents of this plan, including many women in scientific fields, say implementing sex-based quotas will actually be detrimental because it will communicate that the women can't compete on even terms with men and will be 'devastating' to the quality of science 'if every male-dominated field has to be calibrated to women's level of interest.'"

Comments

How about the reverse quotas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Law, psychology, education, journalism, etc. are dominated by women. Should we expect to see male quotas there?

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[Wandering Wombat]

What about racial equality? Is that one just not cool anymore? Because I know there white/non-white ratio of people in my field (locally, at least) is about three times higher than the white/non-white ratio of the general population (locally, at least).

THAT'S IT!!! No more white people allowed to become architects until we fix these numbers!

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[digitrev]

Same with nursing and secretarial jobs. However, you'll never see male quotas (a good thing) because that would be favourable to men (a bad thing these days). Equality, as far as I'm concerned, means equal pay for equal jobs. I sincerely hope that a quota system never goes through, because quotas are ultimately detrimental to the system and insulting to the people who get this advantage. Give people a boost when they need it, such as scholarships for people in a miserable financial situation. Hiring should only be done on the grounds that they'll do a good job. I don't care what's in between your legs, just do your fucking job and do a good job of it.

That being said, I would love to see more XX-chromosome carrying members of our society in my physics classes. But it has to be their choice and not at the expense of more qualified people. And for the record, the two best physics professors I've lacked a penis.

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[jgarra23]

What about racial equality? Is that one just not cool anymore?
What about LGBT equality, I demand an EQUAL number of Lesbians, an equal number of Queers, an equal number of Bi-Sexuals and an EQUAL number of trannys to be a requirement of labs which accept govt. funding!! What about straight people? To hell with them!!

In other news I actually DO have an African-American friend who applied for an African American scholarship who was later turned down because he's not black... Oh, what, you say that African-American is actually a racist term too, but don't tell the bleeding hearts...

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, you'll never see male quotas (a good thing) because that would be favourable to men (a bad thing these days)

In Sweden, there are male quotas as well. As a result, a couple of hundred women that were denied entry to vet school are suing the country's government for discrimnation.

Needless to say, men can not sue.

Feminism is not about gender equality, it's gender war, and they are winning.

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[Arterion]

Maybe when we start having a racially-equal number of crackwhores, violent criminals, terrorists, drug dealers, layabouts, and social misfits; then maybe we can start applying it to other things.

I'm not for political correctness (only fairness). If racial profiling, or gender profiling, or sexual profiling, or any other type of profiling generates positive results, then why aren't we doing it?

In other words -- if girls don't want to study science them please, for the love of science, don't try to make them. I sincerely believe that statistically, men are better at science than women. There are enough objectively identifiable differences between the sexes to justify such a statement. (The same could be said for races, too.)

The key thing to remember, though is that, being good at science doesn't have, or doesn't need to have any particular value or "worth" associated with it. I'm not good at sports, and I don't think that makes me less of a person.

(In case you're wondering, I'm a gay man who considers himself a very liberal Socialist on the political spectrum.)

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[professionalfurryele]

Risk, it comes down to risk. If we REALLY want to get more women into the sciences we need the make the risks of the profession lower.

By and large research has shown that the maxim that men and women are equally mentally competent is true. There are a few indications that maybe within specific skills men and women differ a little between populations, but by and large if there is a man who can do a job competently then there is a woman who can too.

However, women are statistically more risk averse. And science (especially the hard sciences) is an incredibly risky discipline to undertake as a profession. Better to be a lawyer or a doctor. And women agree with this assessment. Many countries now train more women in these professions than men.

The real problem with academia isn't discrimination. I've come across no discrimination working as a scientist. The problem isn't how hard academia is. Women are just as tough as men. The problem is that academia is playing roulette with your career, not to mention damn hard. 9 till 9 for pay nowhere near what you could earn in the private sector, no job security until you are in your mid to late 30s if you are lucky and get on a tenure track.

If we want to have more women in academia then the way academics are treated needs to change. Competent (but not brilliant) academics shouldn't fall by the wayside, and brilliant ones should be treated like rock stars.

This applies doubly so in the hard sciences where concrete metrics of achievement increase the perceived risk of those who are less confident.

We are failing young women and it doesn't just hurt them. While men and women are by and large similar, there are biological differences and exceptional individuals who think are certain way are more likely to be female than male. The value of someone who can think outside the box should not be underestimated, and up until now the box is largely drawn out by testosterone junkies. By engineering a system which dissuades women we not only lose out on a significant number of competent individuals undertaking research (a catastrophe in and of itself), but we lose out on those outliers whose drastically different modes of thought might spur important breakthroughs.

We NEED more women in the hard sciences. But quotas will just guarantee mediocrity at best, and at worst they we do more harm than good. Fixing the culture of academia will cost money. Money to pay for job security. Money to pay for an image change. Money to ensure the hard sciences are more cooperative and social. Money to pay higher wages.

But why fix a problem when you can pretend to on the cheap?

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[Original Replica]

Law, psychology, education, journalism, etc. are dominated by women. Should we expect to see male quotas there?

Don't forget about parenting. Thanks to most Fathers a pushed away from having as strong relationships with their children as mothers are by being made to feel incompetent as a parent. Of course this is just accepted and even flaunted in our culture these days, we went from having TV shows about "Father Knows Best" to having every sitcom dad being a likable but incompetent bumbler who is always saved from his parental ineptitude by the always correct super mom. Imagine the public outcry there were a movie released that took the treatment that "Kindergarten Cop" or "Three Men and a Baby" gave to men's ability to be parents and applied it to women's ability to be scientists.

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[element-o.p.]

My only problem with any kind of profiling is that it makes it easy to become prejudiced.

I agree when you said "if girls don't want to study science them [sic] please, for the love of science, don't try to make them. I sincerely believe that statistically, men are better at science than women. There are enough objectively identifiable differences between the sexes to justify such a statement."

However, here is the catch: a particular women may very well be better at <pick scientific field here> even though statistically speaking, women (as a group) tend not to better at <same scientific field> than men (as a group). Plumbing alone is not sufficient to determine whether a man or a woman should be admitted to a degree program, offered a job, etc. If the best candidate for the opportunity is a woman, select her. If it's a man, select him. If it's a person (either sex) of African, American Native, Polynesian Islander, Caucasian, etc., select that person without regard for skin color, sex, orientation, etc.

This is why quotas are a bad idea. With either quotas or with profiling, you are discriminating on the basis of irrelevant evidence (skin color, sex, etc.).

Re:How about the reverse quotas?

[cashman73]

You must be in graduate school. I graduated from a pharmacy graduate program in which the majority of our graduate students were either Chinese, Indian, or some other Asian. As a white male or European descent, not to mention also an American citizen in a US graduate program, I was technically a minority during my tenure as a grad student; except I didn't get any "special treatment" as a minority. Even today, I work with a research group of eight people; myself and the PI are US citizens, everyone else is foreign national, at least half are Asian. And the government still doesn't consider me a "minority"; which is why quotas and protected groups are nothing but complete and utter bullshit.

This is ridiculous

[lyml]

The scientific process is unbiased towards either gender. Requesting change in that for the sake of statistics is actually negative to equality.

The only way to achieve true equality between genders is to treat them the same.

How about

[BigJClark]

How about putting those in positions who have earned them, regardless of age, sex or race, instead of mandating a certain ratio. If anything, the mandated ratio will foster more discrimination because of the perceived view that they "didn't earn it".

Re:men and women have different interests

[Jherek Carnelian]

Why is this so terrible to admit? It's obvious to everyone, yet all these PC jerks want to deny it.

Trouble is, you are confusing the end result with the root cause.

What these "PC jerks" believe is that women and men are socially conditioned to have different interests -- in other words, it just ain't natural. The concern is that the social conditioning is detrimental. That stereotypical "women's interests" are less valued and thus less rewarding than stereotypical "men's interests."

Re:men and women have different interests

[flanksteak]

Agreed. There are fewer women in science and technology not because they lack the ability, but because they lack the interest. This is not a bad thing, but too often it gets interpreted as an issue of perceived inferiority.

Bad Idea

[SpcCowboy]

Quotas are never a good idea. They spawn resentment from those being left out and imply that those in need of a quota wouldn't be good enough to get in without it. Equality is giving everyone a fair and equal opportunity. Besides, this does nothing to fix the fundamental problem: there are fewer women because they are less interested. If the government wants to start a program to get more women into science and engineering fields, it should be aimed at young kids. Get elementary, middle and high school girls excited about going into these fields and the numbers will grow.

Re:Bad Idea

[XanC]

If the government wants to start a program to get more women into science and engineering fields, it should be aimed at young kids.

Okay, but why should it do that? How about presenting kids with a wide range of options for what to do with their lives, and let them decide what's interesting?

I think that's pretty close to what we're doing now, and if that means there aren't many women in engineering, then that's the way it is.

Every asinine idea gets recycled.

[jcr]

Quotas are just discrimination by another name. Requiring employers to hire based on any criteria other than an applicant's qualifications is a terrible thing to do to anyone already in that profession, especially the members of whatever group is getting the preferential treatment. Any woman employed in the sciences will suddenly come under suspicion as to wether she can actually do the work, or just got the job because of the quota.

-jcr

A PITA for women and a boon to misogyny.

[Cordath]

Many organizations that try to encourage women to enter the physical sciences and engineering tend to generate a lot of extra work for women who are already in those fields. They expect these women to drop what they're doing and sit on committees, speak to high school crowds, participate in a disproportionate number of peer reviews for other women (to keep panel sex ratios "fair"), etc.. The list goes on.

These women, having "made it" themselves, often don't feel that sexual discrimination is still a significant issue in their field. However, they still feel pressured to participate lest they be labeled "anti-feminist". I wouldn't be surprised if some women who have had success in the physical sciences have, when possible, fled to a less male-dominated field just to lighten their workloads.

While it's certainly a good thing to ensure that there is a level playing field in male dominated fields, some of these organizations really ought to back off and let women in science and engineering concentrate on their work instead of wasting their time and holding them back with nonsense. Make no mistake, if you saddle a woman with 20+ hours/week of extra duties just because she's a woman, you're no better than the "evil oppressing misogynists" you think you're fighting.

Re:men and women have different interests

[timmarhy]

that's utter rubbish to compare the lower number of women in science to the racial discrimination of the old days.

for a start, no one is proposing women should be kept out of these jobs. what they are in fact proposing is that sexual discrimination against men is ok. if it's a cultural "weakness" in america that causes women to avoid science, then spend money getting them interested in highschool and even earlier. don't deny anyone based on gender, it's wrong no matter what spin you try put on it.

still waiting for Men's Studies classes

[Scudsucker]

If universities are forced to ensure that the gender of athletes is proportional to the rates of enrollment, regardless of actual interest, then I don't see why they shouldn't have Men's Studies programs to mirror Women's Studies, regardless of actual interest.

This is because feminism was never actually about equality, but improving the social status of women. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself - I don't see why the NAACP should take it upon itself to stick up for Latinos, for example. Whereas the goal of feminism is gender equality, but is really only about improving things for women.

Take the suffragist movement, for example. It was started at a convention in 1848, finally succeeding on a national scale with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Know what else happened in that time? The Civil War and World War I. Note that suffragists didn't demand the right to be drafted with the right to vote. Ditto that for WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam. Hmm.

Today, breast cancer research receives far more money than prostate cancer research, even though prostate cancer kills about as many men as breast cancer kills women. Many states have an Office of Women's Health, but only New Hampshire has an Office of Men's Health - and it had to start without any funding.

Men are far and away the #1 victim of assaults and murders and make up at least 40% of domestic violence victims, yet Congress passes a Violence Against Women Act.

But back to school - yes, the vast majority of PhD's are men - but men also round out the bottom of the scale with the most mental disabilities. And if these people were really concerned about equity, they'd be doing something about the 60/40 female/male disparity in overall enrollment.

Which isn't to say that women haven't gotten a raw deal, the point is that men have too. Feminism needs to go away, and be replaced with straight up egalitarianism.

Re:Nonsense

[Jherek Carnelian]

And spare me this silly "society makes the genders different" nonsense. There are innate differences between the sexes! Go to a fourth grader's birthday party and see. The boys are raising hell and the girls are sitting around talking. Give a little boy a doll, he burns it or rips off the head. Give a little girl a firetruck, she names it and puts it to bed.

Why do think that anecdotal behavior of children who exist in the current system of social conditioning somehow proves that social conditioning does not exist? When in a large group together, all the boys do one thing and all the girls do another thing, sure seems like a strong argument for the existence of social conditioning - that girl who wants to run around and raise hell is shamed into behaving like a good little girl and that boy who wants tuck his firetruck into bed is laughed at.

If what you claimed were true, then there would be few to no scientific studies showing otherwise. At best you've got large minority of studies that show there are innate differences in a minority of areas, but math and science are rarely the areas.