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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.'"
Why is this so terrible to admit? It's obvious to everyone, yet all these PC jerks want to deny it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why do we want women in sciences and engineering?
Why is there not so strong a push to get more male nurses and primary school teachers? Or even publishing?
Is it because these are seen as female professions and therefore less worthy?
In Malaysia (a Muslim country), most public universities have more female students than male students. In my Biotechnology Faculty, the ratio of women to men is like 3:1 as in the other science faculties. In fact, my university has been jokingly renamed the Women's University of Malaysia. About the only bastion of male majority left is engineering, and even then the numbers are almost equal.
As a woman who was in science for a couple of decades, I can tell you that quotas may be bad, but, like democracy, they're better than anything else we've got.
The overwhelming majority of the gatekeepers are male, and too many of them have their heads too far up their asses to recognize merit in any female.
It's not the quality of the female scientists that is the problem. It's unconscious and pervasive bigotry on the part of the guys who hand out jobs and money. Nothing but quotas will ever force a change.
As a woman looking to go into a science/engineering field I have to say that this is just a stupid idea. To be honest a quota would have the chance of making me NOT want to go into the field because I would have to deal with people thinking that I couldn't have gotten in if there had been no quota to fill. And yes I really am a woman. I really am.
There are affirmative-action programs to encourage men to pursue careers in nursing, so there is a precedent...
So they object because a) It will make it seem that women need a leg up, and b) they'll have to dumb down science to give women a leg up. I don't particularly believe the second, but if it is true, that would mean the first is just an accurate appraisal of reality.
Did changing standards 'devastate' firefighting, policing or the Army?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Guys can have a child while doing research, but it is much more difficult for women. Pregnancy can mean that you have to stop doing certain types of research or it may just interfere with your ability to be competitive in your field. Putting off childbearing until after getting a PhD and postdoc will put most women firmly into their thirties when they have children, at which time birth defects and complications become more prevalent.
Some professors don't like women in their labs for this very reason. By the time a woman has completed her research, if she has had a child in that time frame, someone else may have already published it.
Science is competitive, and women are often at a disadvantage.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
What's this 8 hours a day thing ?
How many of us are available for call any time day or night. Where's my work:home balance.
How about fixing that ?
The truth is, that without my wife bearing the brunt of raising the kids, I would not be able to do the job I do as a married man with children. It would be impossible.
Nullius in verba
So where do I go to demand that there are equal numbers of male and female babysitters, maids, nurses, and elementary school teachers? And can someone remind me what the ratio of men to women in congress is?
In short: stupid idea. If women don't *want* to be scientists and engineers, fix it in schools by encouraging them to try it and doing your best to encourage the removal of the societal bias against it. Allowing minorities and women who are *less* qualified then white males to get jobs just to fulfill a quota is one thing that *will* reduce the quality of our science and engineering.
If you want to remove bias in hiring scientists and engineers, at require that the person who makes the decision to grant interviews not see any information that could identify a person's sex or race, including the name. Then, if you must, require that the interviewer match the interviewee in sex and race and if the interviewer isn't given the authority to decide who gets hired, again remove any identifying information from the report before it goes to the person who does make the decision.
That's a nice, scientific way to reduce (not eliminate... women and minorities can still be biased against other women and minorities) bias without hurting the final product. I mean, what would you do in the proposed bill if you only got 10 female and 90 male applications to fill 30 spots? Pick women off the street and try to make them do someone else's job?
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Um... haven't we had a bunch of articles on Slashdot about how the U.S. is *underproducing* science and engineering students?
It would be one thing if we had way too many and, for the available jobs, men were being unfairly selected over women. But when you have a general shortage how can you possibly increase the % women except for diminishing the quantity of men? Are they just going to fire people with Y chromosomes and leave their positions unfilled?
What I want to know is why it is apparently so abhorrent that women are going into fields like teaching, physical therapy, etc. instead of physics. Hero-complex aside, most people would much rather have these kinds of jobs than spend all day reading research papers and crunching numbers.
And it's not like the "progressive" universities aren't already jumping over themselves to hire women professors anytime they can.
Ever notice that men tend to pursue money and jobs that will make them money so that they can attract women?
[insert witty comment about an institution that must "meat" a quota]
Really though, that is exactly the problem. The people mandating these quotas are assuming that there is an overwhelming number of talented women who are not getting into schools because of a (yet unproven) bias. The reality? Most women just have less interest in certain fields, just like most men have less interest in certain fields. Case-in-point:
My school's electrical engineering program has had a long-running goal: double female enrollment. This recently had to be changed to "increase female enrollment" because my graduating year has zero women (this includes computer engineering, which is considered a semi-separate department). It's not that the female applicants were discriminated against; in fact, there have been no allegations of discrimination of any type in the department, and we have faculty of all races and genders (and one member who had a sex-change operation a few years ago). There just aren't many female applicants. In fact, the policy for meeting that goal was to increase advertising to female high school seniors, including deliberately skewing the ratio of pictures of male engineers to females (which required us to get pictures from other departments).
If there was a quota for female enrollment, we wouldn't even have an EE department. It is one thing to be politically correct, and I certainly wouldn't go around claiming that women are inherently inferior to men (I would have nothing to base such a claim on anyway, since I have no points of comparison). It is quite another to demand that the statistics be changed through legislation.
Palm trees and 8
Command and control politicians who use government to control us and our lives.
There will be revolution if the banks fail because the Congress was instrumental in giving cheap loans to minorities.
Lets not forget those ridiculously low interest rates by Bernanke.
Jesus.
Where are you Ron Paul?
Yes they did.
Females are put into positions where they cannot do their physical part routinely. However, to bring it up would be the end to your career.
STFU unless you've had to carry a female's rucksack for her. Every military school i've been to that allowed females has shown me what a liability they can be.
Ask the Canadians, who have done a much better job of figuring out how to do this than the Americans.
There is a significant difference between changing physical standards to accommodate women and changing intellectual standards to accommodate idiots. While it is OK to raise the mile run time for women, it is not OK to drop the SAT requirements for admission to a degree program when men and women generally have the same average scores. The fact that women are vastly more likely to use their SAT scores to apply to something like law, education, or communications does not mean that physics programs have to accept lower scores for women or than some engineering program has to give easier tests for women.
The issue is that women are mentally capable of tackling hard sciences and engineering, but they are choosing to pursue other interests. Lowering standards will not do anything to combat this.
I've been on several search committees at a state university for faculty positions in a chemistry department. We are actively _trying_ to get women faculty, but last time around I don't think we even got one female applicant...certainly not a domestic (USA) female applicant.
In the search prior to that, we had one qualified female applicant. We offered her the position, and she turned it down. We moved to the next most qualified candidate, who was male.
I have no idea how we'd handle a quota. Just pick someone off the street and say to her "okay, you're a chemistry professor. We need to keep our federal funding."?
Having recently finished a college program for software development - the ratios are pretty bad. The instructors were all so damned happy to have so many females in my program. We had about 30% female students, which was the best ratio in years. IIRC, there was already a committee devoted to bringing in new females.
Being a female, all this 'rah rah' business was pretty awkward, but it's a lot better than mandatory quotas. At least I know I got in and through on my own merit.
Look, I am finishing my Ph.D in Civil Engineering, hopefully this year (I am a woman, Brazilian and had a baby during the Ph.D program).
I have never felt any problems with what you call "gatekeepers". There are plenty of incentives and opportunities for women in sciences, you just have to show your work.
Yes, there is probably a few jerks around, but what you do is tough it up, otherwise you will never make it as a scientist anyway.
And I am sorry, but maybe some women should not be choosing these careers anyway. I believe most of the disparity is because of lack of interest from them, not from any barriers in the system.
So stop whining and get to work, people.
A big piece of the article was pointing out that women in science don't particularly want this, organizations teaching science don't want this, and men in science don't want this. The institutions involved are filling out the paperwork but definitely aren't interested in suddenly making 50% of all science graduates women.
And the article also made the appropriate comparison with the field of psychology, which is now something like 70% female (similar disparities exist in education, particularly primary education).
I am officially gone from
My findings are that why yes, we hired much much much fewer women than men. Is it because we were sexist? No. Is it because they were all underqualified, or even less qualified? No.
The cold-hard fact was that only about 10% of the applicants were women. Interestingly enough, (or maybe not), most of these were not native U.S. citizens, but mostly Chinese or Indian women who had come to study in the U.S.
While I am being a "racist" - I might throw in that we never, in our existance as a company, have ever hired a black person.
Was it because they were underqualified, etc. etc. etc.? Again, no.
In my entire career, I have only ever interviewed a single black applicant for an engineering position. (BTW - We actually made this person a good offer, which they accepted, but their existing employer countered it and we lost them.)
My point is that there are less "women and minorities" hired into these positions becasue there are far far far less candidates - not because of any discrimination.
Does discrimination exist in the world? Sure, it does - but to be honest, in the competitive nature of the companies I've been at - and the difficulty in hiring good candidates - I don't think anyone would care if the candidate was a green transsexual with three eyes - if they were a solid candidate - they'd be hired on those grounds.
I've also worked for "Women Owned" companies. This is something that the feds have set up - If your company is at least 51% "woman owned or run" (or minority owned and run) - then you get preferential treatment in dealing with the Feds, and contractors that do business with the Feds. (Like they have to do business with a certain quota of these companies). In my experience, these all have been a smoke-and-mirrors game - Whitey giving his ol' lady a business card that says "CEO" on it, to try and drum up some more business, etc. etc. etc.
Certain people are drawn to certain professions - and that's an individual decision, and there probably is some biological basis in the Men vs. Women thing. Like people have pointed out, should we mandate quotas that H.R. people and Flight Attendents be a certain percent male too?
Now as the "Minorities" go - let's cut to the chase. By "Miniories", we're only talking about certian "Minorities". We're talking about blacks, hispanics, eskimos, Native Americans - and I'm sure some others - but we are NOT talking about Indians, Chinese, or Australians for that matter.
If Congress really wanted to even-out the playing field - they'd be investing money into inner-city schools - like a mile a way from them in DC - which are literally falling apart - and more like prisons than schools. Turn these into places that foster excitement in learning, science and engineering, and are an oasis inside these inner-city slum areas - and you'll see those kids go off to college and become candidates.
Short of doing that - nothing else will ever work. You can give them a billion dollars in college grant money - but if their schools are gang, crime and filth ridden places where they just get locked-up for a few hours a day - then no quota system on the place of the planet will ever balance that out.
Congrats, I'm glad you've had a much more positive experience than many other women have. I can tell stories about people I know personally who have been jerked around in the sciences/engineering due to gender, but neither of our anecdotes is worth much. What is worth a lot is the data, and there are *copious* data on this topic and they point pretty strongly to the conclusion that women (and girls) are being discouraged from pursuing careers in the sciences. I don't have any at my fingertips, but you can pretty easily Google to find some. (That, or I could ask my best friend who reads the studies a lot more than I do.)
Also hear's something to think about: Could quotas actually severely harm women in technology, by making people assume anyone who got hired and was female got the job due to the quota system, thus undermining their hard work?
I agree, but would like to point out that it makes sex even more fun. Modern women, no matter how bitchy outside the bedroom, are still women when naked, and most women like things in bed they'd never admit to their feminist friends. It's nice to have a woman who likes being bitten while getting screwed hard, with you on top and talking dirty, but it's even better when you know she pretends to like being in control when she's around other people.
Psst - if you're a guy and you feel like talking after sex, you're either not doing it right, or not long enough (but I repeat myself).
http://scienceline.org/2006/09/25/ask-wenner-sex/
Some do, though... it's very wierd.
When I was in college, we had one girl in the class who was, objectively speaking, gorgeous. She had a spectacular body, amazing face, and she always dressed to show everything off. She would lean wayyy over when she was talking to guys, and she knew exactly what she was making us see. However, she would get SO MAD if she actually caught you looking at her, and she'd wrap her coat around her in a huff and get all pissed that she was being "treated as an object".
She was extremely smart, and she got very good grades in a very hard course.
I think she was just trying to confuse everyone around her, because I still don't know what the hell she was doing. I understand that she continued this behavior right on out of college and into the workplace.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Which is a whole separate load of horse-shit that needs to be addressed. If it's a requirement for a male infantry soldier to be able to carry his wounded fireteam partner for X number of meters, how can you seriously state that a female shouldn't need to meet the same standard? (BTW, I'm aware that the US and UK still don't allow women in the combat arms because of this, but on the modern battlefield it applies to support personnel also).
Despite the artificially lowered standards, women are expected to be able to keep up with the men, and carry out the same duties. Which, really, is all that matters. If they can do the job, great! If they can't do the job, though, it doesn't matter how many "standards" they pass - nobody will want to work with them.
You are discriminating if you decide that the white male that's been around for a few years must be good, and the new white male employee must be OK since he isn't under any quotas, but you'll have to scrutinize the work of the new African American female employee since she came in after the quotas were mandated. I threw in African American since that also leads to an assumption of affirmative action.
No. I am not. I would be discriminating if I scrutinized them because they were black, or female, or both. I am not discriminating by saying there's a greater probability that someone whose job was mandated by law isn't up to the task, and paying closer attention to them. I'd do the same for white males, if they ever passed one of these idiotic quota laws for white males. Your claim of discrimination completely misses my point, and, frankly, is insulting, because it isn't in the least true.
You're correct that I don't know that anyone who was hired in the absence of a quota is a good employee, but I maintain that there's a higher probability that someone hired under a quota is a poor employee, especially in a field where many women just plain don't show any interest. What you're saying is kind of like saying that insurance companies are wrong to pay closer attention to their members with higher ristk. Everyone can be bad, but some have a higher probability than others.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I am a female doing a PhD in physics. I was always encouraged to do well in science and math by my parents, and my mom is a biologist. I developed an interest in physics on my own without a lot of encouragement from my parents (my mom actually actively tried to get me to do biology instead because she thought I wasn't nerdy enough for physics). When I got report cards at school, all they really cared about was math and science grades - humanities and English weren't so important because they weren't necessary for "real jobs".
I work in a physics department. Women are definitely a minority. However, I am not in favor of quotas to correct this imbalance. I'm not in favor of quotas period. I was generally in favor of title IX because I didn't enjoy getting the crappy leftover equipment from the men's ice hockey team. I remember a teammate who was given a football helmet and ended up getting a puck to the face because the bars across it were too widely spaced. I've been in science for a while now and have definitely experienced such fun things as sexual harassment, discrimination based on being female and all sorts of fun. This ranged from the classic, "Are you planning on getting pregnant and dropping out of science" to the unwelcome heavy hand on my knee and more. I do not think that quotas are the answer to these problems. I'm not sure what the answer to these problems is. Perhaps time will solve them.
New physicians and lawyers are now predominantly women. Not only are these fields lucrative, but there's a lot of people practicing in them (that is, there are far more openings than for physicists or mathematicians).
I know in the state of Maine, being the liberal hole it is.... it PAYS (it meaning we) for single mothers(see harlots) to go to college. They pay NOTHING, receive a stipend to live on, food stamps, rent, utilities paid, and oh yeah, if they have an issue with their car the state will pickup the bill. Oh did I mention the state also pays for daycare?
Oh, I also forgot, they don't need to pass. One of my friends was dating one of these single mother system users... she skipped class, dumped her kid at daycare and spent the day having sex with him. What a gem she was.
Now in a state like Maine (highest taxes in the country) it takes a LOT of effort and cash(since white men don't qualify for anything in aide if their parents make 30g's a year) for men to get through college to begin with.
In the state of Maine one out of three people is on some form of state assistance. Oh course most men don't qualify(need kids or an injury). So to me it seems that the MEN are being crushed by the system and are being forced to pay for these irresponsible women(who some got pregnant I'm sure).
It's like communism, the state takes from the working and dumps all of their income into the lazy.
SO yeah, more women in Maine are in college and more women graduate with degrees. Not all of them are bad, some girls just made a mistake and are capitalizing on the system, BUT the system is FORCING men out of school because they just can't afford it(since they're the only ones who pay).
Of course, there's always what a wise man once said... "There are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics."
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
The causes of the apparent pay gap are discussed here.
We are all just people.
Because they are, generally speaking, not very family friendly
- why should they be?
However, call me a cynic, I doubt Congress really cares about that.
- nor do I or many other people.
There is no good reason to make science 'family friendly'. Science should be about passion, family is about responsibility. Responsibility to family kills passion. AFAIAC family and passion to science are most often mutually exclusive.
You can't handle the truth.
I just read a particularly devastating critique of the quota system/gender pay differences in Thomas Sowell's latest book. His point (backed with copious evidence) was that the differences in outcomes is almost entirely explained by the differences in interest. Some careers require so much dedication that a few years away (raising kids for example) or shorter work weeks severely impacts your competitiveness. Folks who want to have a life outside of work tend to avoid these careers; why shouldn't we let individuals make that decision for themselves?
They do this in the Army as well, it's bullshit. On the obstacle course women don't even have to climb the walls, they can simply run around them, because they are women. Also, a large percentage of women are unable to throw grenades far enough so they do not hurt themselves! Oh well, I guess the enemy will be easier on them since they are women. It doesn't just stop at women, it's also anti-white, if you are white, tough luck, you don't get any help. What's that? You are black? Oh in that case welcome to this university, it doesn't matter that your scores are less than the white candidates, because, hell, you are black! Do you see this type of bullshit in other countries? Nope. The west has this shit shoved down their throats and all we do is sit and take it. I am sure if a large percentage of whites decided to live in China and create their own societies, not learn the traditions/culture, speak in English and basically refuse to assimilate there would be genocide.
That's well known - what is not so well known is that this release of go-to-sleep chemicals is probably an evolutionary advantage that developed to allow the first ejaculation (higher sperm count) to impregnate the female, because further intercourse can lead to the sperm to be removed with the thrusts. Sex feels good to encourage reproduction, but it needs to be "regulated" for the benefit of reproduction. Hence your boner is the first thing that goes after intercourse. In fact, this think-of-the-semen business is pretty serious.. some promiscuous gorilla species have specially adapted dicks to help them remove the previous male's sperm, thereby increasing their own chances.
Ties in nicely with the release of more prolactin during intercourse than masturbation. How the automatic hormonal release actually knows/communicates with the sentient cortex (to recognize the difference)is more interesting. It is possible that we think about sex differently during masturbation. I certainly do(less dominance/nothing to dominate).
This is true. As someone who is currently working to change my sex, I have first hand experience.
I have to say, however, that I like both astrophysics and stuffed animals. So such things aren't mutually exclusive.
Quotas are stupid. Take your daughters to a planetarium.
I brought up domestic violence because there is an attitude that DV is something men do to women, which is simply not the case. The fact of the matter is that men suffer more from violence overall then women, yet women get the laws, the sympathy, the outreach and support. When was the last time you saw a billboard with a picture of a beaten man, encouraging him to get help from his violent girlfriend. When was the last time you saw months of coverage of a male high school student who went missing in Aruba. Where is the made-for-TV-movie about Phil Hartman, who was murdered by his wife. Where was the outrage when Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, cracked the following joke about a man run over by his wife three times, with his daughter in the front seat: "Down in Texas, the gas prices have gotten so bad, wives have to form carpools to run over their husbands." Imagine the response if, say, Mike Huckabee made a similar crack about Laci Peterson.
Time is really the only answer. And while its not politicaly correct for a man to complain about sexism, I don't know if you've ever heard of how it is for male elementary teachers in certain areas? Same thing you're describing, but in reverse (and switch sexual harassment for just plain ol bitching harassment).
The issue isn't fundamentaly with women in science, or anything... its just an issue with our society and predefined roles. When parents stop (only) giving the little girl her barbies and the little boy his kid chemistry kit, things will change.
That reminds me of my basic training where our "Sister" flight was female. For the "Confidence" course 92% of the males passed the course while only 50% of the females passed their course that had obstacles that were 50% as high or long. Granted, the average American woman is in general in poor shape relative to the average male and 2 of our sister flights members requested to be allowed to run the male side of the course, but denied. Also 2 of the men in our flight failed the course, but one of them was 39. Based on the demographics of our sister flight, the average ~18 YO woman in the US is kind of tubby. I suspect that a large part of the problem is social in that American families as a rule do not hold daughters to the same standard they do their sons. The best developer on my team is female but she is the only domestic female on my team. It is telling the 50% of the H1-B's in our group are female and that they are largely as good at what they do as the male H1-B's. If the USA implemented a quota system, I doubt that would be true for domestic female workers.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
MIT did a very careful study of pay and resource equity internally among faculty and discovered that they had a very measurable bias.
They then acknowledged it publicly and made a serious effort to correct it.
Then why don't you also tell that to all the people who say they are Italian-American, Irish-American, and Asian-American. No one ever seems to have a problem with those terms.
You just haven't been listening:
... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. ... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_American
Former President Theodore Roosevelt in speaking to the NY Chapter of the Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall on Colubmus day 1915, asserted that,[3]
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
In my department, a female professor became irate when one of her female graduate students failed the qualifiying exams and was asked to leave the program. At the next faculty meeting, she argued that the exams were "racist and sexist" and as such should be either eliminated or the standards for women reduced.
My initial reaction was, "How on Earth can the laws of math and physics be 'racist and sexist'?", but her argument was plausible: she claimed that women cannot handle stress as well as men and so forcing them to take a stressful test was unfair. A study was later done where the entire program was scrutinized, and as far as I know major changes were ruled out. Everyone that I am aware of supported the existing system--the female graduate students that I talked to were insulted by her assertion and saw it a cheapification of what they worked for.
I said nothing about competitive, I said risky. Increasing pay across the board would reduce the perceived risk. So would introducing new permanent positions somewhere between a tenured professor (who should be paid something comparable to a professional football players wage) and a postdoc. Perhaps make them primarily teaching roles or some such. Having an environment where everyone fears for their job daily and has to move house once every two years doesn't do anyone any good.
You can outsource most engineering and science jobs.
It's harder to outsource many of the "women dominated" jobs - good luck outsourcing nursing, school teachers, flight attendants, etc to India.
So why the push for engineering and science? If you want more engineers and scientists in your country, pay more.
If you don't want to pay more, go figure.
Stop trying to trick women into helping increase the supply (more supply = lower pay on average) only to outsource their jobs on the first bad quarter.
There aren't that many male nurses - though their higher upper body strength would help a lot in moving patients. Should there be a male quota for nursing too? Why not?