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Research Reveals Low Exposure of Excellent Work By Female Scientists
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the University of Sheffield have found that high quality science by female academics is underrepresented in comparison to that of their male counterparts. The researchers analyzed the genders of invited speakers at the most prestigious gatherings of evolutionary biologists in Europe — six biannual congresses of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and found that male speakers outnumbered women. Even in comparison to the numbers of women and men among world class scientists – from the world top ranked institutions for life sciences, and authors in the top-tier journals Nature and Science - women were still underrepresented among invited speakers."
The researchers also found that women were underrepresented at the 2011 congress because men accepted invitations more often than women.
So it's not an ingrained sexism on the behalf of the congress, but according to the next quote based on biological differences:
The most demanding phase of a career in Biology, when it is important to communicate one’s findings, and to build networks with other scientists, coincides with the age at which women's fertility starts to decline, meaning it is their last chance to have a family - unlike men.
we're all equal, but women are more equal than men
Unfortunately, the effort to equally represent women in science usually ends up devaluing the other, more important work that they do... raising a good family. Society has a greater need for mothers than scientists.
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Typical women are more interested in the social domains of life. There are exceptions of course, but in general men are more predisposed to want to devote themselves to the sciences than women.
Yeah, I know, sexist pig and all. Sometimes the truth is not what we think it should be. On average, more men are interested in science than women. This is just a side-effect of that.
The title makes it sound like they took excellent papers authored by men, and excellent papers of equivalent quality authored by women, and found that those papers authored by women, though they were of the same quality, did not have as much exposure. This would indeed be an interesting finding and would point to sexism in the sciences, as it would show that the same product (paper of a certain quality) was being treated differently solely because of the sex of the author. This of course assuming the measure of equivalent quality was a good one.
However it seems like all they did is "analyze" (read: count) the number of male and female speakers and found that there were less female speakers. From this they say women are "underrepresented". Hardly a sound conclusion. What if 20% of all scientists are women, and 80% are men? Then a fair (neither over- nor under-) representation would be 20% female speakers and 80% male speakers. Then you'd have to go see the reasons why there are less women scientists than male scientists, which can be many. The pregnancy thing mentioned in the article is likely a big one, at least.
If only female scientists would tell us their findings instead of expecting us to read their minds.
[Rent This Space]
the smart women who aren't getting the credit they deserve!
What? You thought this was an overlord joke?
Be seeing you...
This is probably one of the few places where the correlation is not causation meme isn't total moonbat idiocy.
Well at least that is what Marissa Powell's answer would be. /ducks
Why is everyone and everything focusing on GENDER?! Gender makes NO DIFFERENCE!!! Even color or race make no difference!! STUPIDITY comes in all colors and genders!!!
Not sure if it plays a role, but I believe there may not be enough enthusiasm and support from female peers. That is, not just other scientists per-se, but other women in general. It seems to be a motivating factor in nearly everything else women do.
Meanwhile, men, like myself, have no problem tinkering away for days, weeks, or years (re:Tesla, Doc Emmet Brown) while everyone thinks they're a coocoo.
I have a dream, that one day, scientists will be judged on the content of their science rather than by the gametes they possess.
Almost nothing in this comment makes any sense. What is a 'wider distribution'? You mean men are more versatile than women, more random, more prone to doing things, what?
Anytime I hear the phrase 'men are' or 'women are' I know the stupid isn't far behind, because making generalisations about the personalities and proclivities of three and a half billion people from an enormous variety of different backgrounds, cultures, and educational levels is not possible.
This is his third one this week. Is he trying to impress someone?
I conjecture and wallow...I call BS on the whole article.
Its gotten to the point whenever someone cries discrimination my mind goes numb and I think to myself, I just want to be left alone to do my research and just keep it to myself since me being an evil male I should not even bother anymore, let the whiners and complainers have society.
Look. As long as there is nothing in a person's way (and this is already the case by law) these kinds of studies need to be abandoned. The fact is, there are FAR fewer female garbage truck drivers than male. Also, far fewer female auto mechanics. Are they being disciminated against there too? Or is it more likely they don't have an interest. And if it is lack of interest, look to that research. The more we understand our differences, the better off we will be.
has to say about this.
If I understood GP properly, he was saying that for a given skill, while the mean level of ability may be the same between genders, the variance among men will generally be higher. There will be both more genius-level men and more retarded-level men, while women will generally be more concentrated around the mean. It's a point I've heard a couple times before, never with a cited source.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
That is, my point is that men, in general, tend to have a larger diversity - a wider distribution - than women do, in almost any area of skill.
This is impossible to parse. I am guessing you mean a wider distribution of skill level in any area of skill? As in women are more clustered around certain norms of achievement and men tend to be more divergent in both good and bad ways?
I feel like I've heard that's true for some areas (e.g. math), but I'd be very hesitant to draw that kind of across-the-board statement without massive amounts of data. Are you sure men aren't just more bombastic, both when idiots and when geniuses, so it's more obvious that they have divergent skill levels?
Well, getting a free OB/GYN or urological/andrological exam can never hurt.
Ezekiel 23:20
Men are specialized women. Instead of the standard XX chromosome possessed by the standard reproducing (i.e.: species continuing) members of the species, men carry an XY. The XY configuration rewires the brain so that it can enjoy simple focused goal seeking as its own purpose. Thus men are useful for working boring jobs, fighting wars, and other dangerous/unpleasant tasks that the species needs a disposable member to do.
What is a 'wider distribution'? You mean men are more versatile than women, more random, more prone to doing things, what?
I've heard this theory elaborated before (by a female physicist btw). Supposedly, if you look at physical things like height or weight distributions, you'll find much more variance amongst male human beings than you will with females. In other words, if you found the 100 people in the world with the highest BMI and the lowest BMI, a preponderance of both groups will be men.
The theory is, if you could apply the same measurements to more subjective things like "intelligence", you would find the same things: both the 100 (or 1000 or whatever) dumbest and the 100 smartest people in the world will be mostly men.
I'll go on record as saying I'm not sure I buy this logic at all, but perhaps that's just because I'm male and I heard it from a female first. ;-)
Women on the other hand, are getting pregnant no matter what, unless they very ugly or genetically unable.
Tell that to any number of childless couples, I'm sure the'll love hearing your philosophy (end sarcasm). Not to mention that the problem may lay on the male side, women without children aren't necessarily childless because of something wrong with *them*.
When you look at distribution of just about any quantifiable skill or parameter, the variance among men is higher than among women. That tells you that if you select the best or the worst from any human population according to any quantifiable criteria, chances are you get more men than women: more Nobel prize winners, more saints, but also more criminals and mass murderers. It's basic biology.
And you sure didn't disappoint providing "stupid" right away.
The source of of the idea that men have a higher distribution than women comes from the standard deviation in IQ tests. In other words, the bell curve for men tends to be shorter, and thus wider- leaving the outliers at both ends to be skewed towards men. It is assumed this bleeds over to other areas.
So tell us then, oh mighty TFA, how are we supposed to feel about this?
Since when is research supposed to tell you how to feel about something instead of just how things are? And for the rest of your comment, these numbers were on the first page of the article:
Women were under-represented among invited speakers at symposia (15% women) compared to all presenters (46%), regular oral presenters (41%) and plenary speakers (25%).
They also give numbers for the number of women of different ranked positions at university departments, and what portion were first author versus last author on papers.
With a high-stakes career in academics, where one accusation could cause years of grief, the rule is that you never do anything with any university-connected female that could ever be misinterpreted as sexual.
You do not ask females to go out to dinner to discuss their research. You do not invite (pester) females to visit your university, repeatedly. You do not discuss an abstruse academic point in a bar until late. You do not go to the golf course with a female co-worker (married or unmarried). You do nothing that could ever be misinterpreted, which often means you do nothing at all. This applies even if you are at a conference where the only opportunity to discuss things is late at night, or over dinner, or in a hotel room, or in a bar.
On the other hand, with a male colleague, you find a common social activity and bond.
Over the course of 15 years, subtle effects like this make a huge difference in the quality of social relationships formed between researchers in a field. Good social relationships open the doors that make good professor's famous.
more female scientists to expose themselves.
Humans are no longer controlled by the natural devices of evolution. Do you know why our dicks have a mushroom head? That shape works to pump out competing sperm. If her male isn't able, another male will make sure she's getting pregnant. Religion and marriage sort of ended the practice of alpha males fucking all the females they could find.
It's not politically correct to say this, I know, but they might be underrepresented for the same reasons that female co-workers are underrepresented at staff meetings at my office.
At my office:
"Where's Jennifer?"
"She had to take her kid to the dentist."
At the symposium:
"I thought you were going to invite Jennifer to speak."
"She had to take her kid to the dentist."
I think men are raised to take more risks, so this leads to a lot more wild successes as well as wild failures.
Not nearly as many women use the phrase: "Hold my beer and watch this."
One cannot conclude "low exposure of excellent work by female scientists" from the data. The best one can conclude is that women were underrepresented at six biannual congresses of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. And, even that is questionable as the article does not mention a comparison of the qualitative merits of the research or any preset themes or forums held at the congresses. It could very well be a statistic anomaly caused by a combination previous scheduling research results.
Do you know why our dicks have a mushroom head? That shape works to pump out competing sperm.
Yes, and a cat's penis is hook shaped in case any fish swam up the female cat's vagina.
"the outcome isn't that shocking from a layman's perspective. "
It is a study about Europeans after-all.
(gotta keep the american bashing at bay)
This research was done by a man otherwise we would not be hearing about it.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Men may, in general, *express* a larger diversity. The question of whether this is because of grater actually diversity in men, greater suppression of non-conforming behavior in women, or something else is the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.
Reading the article, they accounted for that; women are underrepresented compared to publication in Science and Nature, for example.
They're great at cooking and cleaning.
otherwise we wouldn't have heard about it.
That is why most criminals are men, for example.
maybe women are just congenitally sneakier
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
A cat's penis is barbed, because the painful extraction stimulates ovulation. Gee, what are the odds the shape of a penis would have to do with sex?
I feel like I've heard that's true for some areas (e.g. math), but I'd be very hesitant to draw that kind of across-the-board statement without massive amounts of data.
Well, most of this theory comes out of psychological research, particularly IQ tests and other general intelligence tests.
It isn't so much that we have across-the-board data for lots of fields/skills/areas, as much as we have a number of studies on supposed tests of "general intelligence," which show a wider variance for men compared to women.
If you believe in the assumption that IQ tests are actually relevant to performance in a wider variety of areas, then it would seem reasonable to conclude that such variance in IQ scores probably has an effect. If you're skeptical of the value of IQ as a general measurement tool, you should be skeptical of these claims as well.
It's interesting. According to most people, sexism is always a huge problem and big deal, except when it comes to their profession, of course. In that case, there are very good reasons for gender/race bias. In their minds, the cream (themselves) have risen to the top and everywhere else people are pigs.
The question that we are never allowed to ask is, maybe sexism/racism is not quite the barrier that you are taught in various 101 "studies" major courses. Maybe some people are just better are certain things, and they gravitate to it. Maybe women and men are not exact carbon copies, except for 3 differences in anatomy. Maybe we think about the world in different ways, and that is really cool. Maybe this means that a group is really exceptional in some things and in others not so much. Maybe an individual can cross over, but as a rules, this rare. Maybe an enlightened society affords opportunities for all, but does not game the system toward artificial outcomes.
Maybe none of these things are true. But, I think many of them can be studied, and I would like to know, no matter where the road lead. Maybe you should feel that way too, instead of just patronizing others.
It's nonsense, like the claim that there is more variance among Caucasians than black Africans or Orientals, explaining why most modern geniuses are white. It's all down to circumstance, not genetics or gender.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
First the whole boothbabe debacle at GDC, then some dev feeling insulted by the guys at Pax in a twitter conversation, and now another one of these research pieces that say absolutely nothing useful while implying that all men should feel guilty because women are still not equal to men in some areas.
It seems these days a person can't even cross the street without some whiner feeling offended or marginalized. I for one do Not welcome our new Political Correct overlords!
Someone has to say it. I fully expect this comment to be flamed or buried. I really don't care.
I think the point was no career woman chooses to be a virgin, with the consequences of having sex unavoidable for most women. Infertile couples are not relevant to this behaviour.
This has been studied with IQ as well - the centers of the curves are the same for men and women (same average IQ) but the peak is higher for women, and the tail is longer for men. And yes, everyone has already made that joke - and that one too.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I run an international conference in a relatively small field, that is, one with only a few thousand researchers all told. We do pretty well at gender balance in our invited speakers, but it is MUCH HARDER to invite qualified female speakers than male ones.
Why?
Because there are fewer of them, so they are in higher demand, since all of the conference organizers want them to speak. Our conference typically has about a 90% acceptance rate for our invitations, for male speakers. For female speakers, it's closer to 50%.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Drama queen/king
You're seriously claiming that intelligence has nothing to do with genetics? I guess believing that you are retarded because your mom dropped you on your head as a baby is better than accepting that you are a retard from a long line of retards who was also dropped as a baby.
That claim would be nonsense because Asians have higher IQ than Caucasians, who have higher IQ than Africans. Probably there are more well-known white geniuses because the there's more funding in countries with a white population than yellow or black.
I've heard this theory elaborated before (by a female physicist btw). Supposedly, if you look at physical things like height or weight distributions, you'll find much more variance amongst male human beings than you will with females.
This has nothing in particular to do with humans. It's that way for most species where the males compete and the one winner male tends to impregnate a whole lot of women. These are called tournament species (and yes, humans are not a pure tournament species, bear with me). In a tournament species, being a low-rank male is not much better than being dead, so the only thing that matters is to maximize the chance that a male baby will end up dominating all the other male babies. In such a situation, higher variance is good, because making the unfit males even more unfit is no penalty at all, while making the number 2 male into the number 1 male is tremendously valuable.
The opposite of that is pair-bonding species, where generally most males are able to find a mate and most males then impregnate and stay with that female mate for a long time and there is little infidelity. Humans are in-between a championship species and a pair-bonding species, so we have aspects of both. In particular, men have higher variance in all sorts of aspects than women do, but not as much as it would be if we had been a pure championship species. It's nothing specific to humans, it's nothing new and it's not scientifically controversial.
It's not taught in school just because of political correctness. Can you imagine the angry parents wanting to know why little Sally was taught in biology class that homo sapiens is not a pure pair-bonding species? We can't even get past abstinence-only education. Of course the feminists would have a fit as well.
It's also true of things like height and this observation of higher variance among males in most traits extends to animal species as well. It's not controversial except politically.
It's fairly obvious, actually. Most traits with a gender component show a wider variance in men than women because men have only one X chromosome, while women have 2, which end up 'averaging' (broadly). This is advantageous genetically as well - if all males were the same, there would be little to distinguish them for sexual competition reasons.
Oh, and since you asked and we're talking about intelligence, source:
(wiki with footnotes)
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I think men are raised to take more risks, so this leads to a lot more wild successes as well as wild failures.
Not nearly as many women use the phrase: "Hold my beer and watch this."
They're raised to take more risks because they are willing to take more risks because of their biology.
> Scientists at the University of Sheffield have found that high quality science by female academics is underrepresented in comparison to that of their male counterparts..
Can't imagine why, personally, I think Geek Girls are hot...
I've heard this idea before. There's some interesting evolutionary logic underpinning it: men have the potential to produce more offspring than women, because women are constrained by the number of children they can personally gestate. So if someone has the option of a high-stakes gamble like becoming a musician, and either becoming a rock star with all the sexual partners they can handle, or dying a penniless loner, it's a better option for a man than for a woman, because the potential returns (in terms of number of children) are higher for a man.
This applies not just to life decisions like career paths, but on a developmental and biochemical level as well. If there's some chemical signal in a developing embryo that will either cause its brain to develop better or worse, with some probability, expressing that signal is a better gamble for a male embryo. So you expect to see more male geniuses and more male dumbasses. It's hard to do a controlled experiment on developing embryos without violating all sorts of ethical restrictions, but results from IQ tests do support the above theory, showing greater variance among men than among women. (Start with wikipedia, and look up the journal articles in references 54-59 if you want some proper citations.)
I've previously been accused of sexism for describing the above theory (despite putting it entirely in objective terms, and despite it being unclear whether greater variance is a good thing or a bad thing), so I like to mention it together with another effect that advantages women over men. Women generally live longer than men (possibly due to the risk-averseness implied by the above logic). In technical fields, people gain knowledge and experience over time. So you would expect the most senior people in a field, who have been learning and growing throughout their entire lives, to have an overrepresentation of women, because a larger fraction of their male colleagues have died off.
Seriously guys there is so much Misandry its not funny. Have you guys seen statistics of males to females in post secondary education. All I read is a bunch of manginas and white knights defending women in all these posts, can't forget the poor victims that women are boo flipping hoo. 70% of all incarcerated men in Jails come from single parent families (Women are the parent) Boys are Dropping out and Failing at extraordinary high rates from schools. 57% of all enrollments in Colleges and Universities are women at the rate that men are falling behind by year 2048 will be the year the last men graduates. 60% of American women will cheat on their spouse. 93% of work related fatalities and injuries are suffered by men. Single Women (City) make more money then a single men does. Domestic Violence is gender symmetrical, most domestic violence is instigates BY women. Women can work, have kids, have pro choice, etc.. Men are forced to men up and get screwed by a unfair system. Continual vilification of men is turning men against the traditional values what's left of them, low marriage rates etc.. Women and feminism has turned society into a Marxist state. The BS of wage gap is bs as well(statistically). The argument of Glass ceiling is also giant amount of horse crap. What about the Glass floor, I don't see women rushing to take on jobs like Sanitation , oil field, welders, plumbers, electricians, lumberjacks etc.. All the statistics I have cited are from US Census Bureau. Before we start ragging one men being the big bad evil misogynists lets look at the raw statistics. I forgot to mention that the overall publications in scientific journals has decreased since the 1970's. Women wanted the privilege of Working in the 70's they thought the grass is greener on the other side.. They never considered working was never a privilege but an obligation. Thank god more men are turning their backs and adopting MGTOW philosophy. I can't wait for the day that men have the pill. That will be the beginning of the end of human civilization.
Saying underrepresented without comparative numbers is just propoganda. If the proportion of speakers to proportion of women in the sciences at the same level (say phd) should be the golden measure. I suspect that it is roughly the same, which makes this a non story. Just because half the population is women, doesn't mean half the speakers should be women when they make up say 15% of the population of a particular kind of scientific genre.
The research is meaningless if they did not normalize the data with the age of the speakers and the historical proportions of females in the given fields.
Genetics are not altered by being dropped. The offspring of two retarded people may not be retarded.
More over it is ridiculous to claim that 50% of the population is dumber than the other 50% because they are genetically female, or black or part of any other vast group. At an individual level it does make some difference, but not at the gender or race level.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Indeed.
I worked for several years in a field of science that is female dominated. (They do exist.) I can assure you that if I had presented demands to the organisers of the conferences I attended that they somehow do more to encourage male participation, that wouldnt have gone anywhere. Nor should it have. Women, and men, should be free to pursue whatever field they wish without such nannyism to help or hinder them.
Show me a real bias interfering with people's chosen careers and I will be concerned. Show me a statistical 'imbalance' easily explained by peoples choices freely made as if this is a problem, and I will tell you to get a job.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
i've heard the interpretation that from the survival of the species perspective females are precious. Evolution 'wants' them to have rock solid gene base, society wants them to be safe not to jeopardize their role, which means teaching them risk aversion. Men are the main source of genetic variance so it's a full blown RNG in their case. One or two badly constructed individuals is no tragedy, they won't pass their genes, no big deal. Genetic diseases mostly in males? No big deal, they are seen as disposable either way. And they have to compete for access to female parts and they are raised that way.
Is it bad? Maybe, but i think not. It's an evolutionary example of the economic concept of comparative advantage. 'Fixing' it in the name of political correctness might come with severe unintended consequences.
Maybe the ladies are taking on subjects that are "forbidden to question"? It took a long time and got no traction in the main stream media despite rather earth shaking conclusions and rock solid research. Here are 2 examples:
- Dr Lisa Jackson's out of season influenza vaccine research. Shows that the effectiveness of the seasonal influenza vaccine is due almost entirely to the healthy user effect.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/337.short
- Stephanie Seneff, PhD, and Senior Research Scientist at MIT, with her work explaining how increased Roundup (glyphosate) use is causing all sorts of health issues and may be linked to all increases in autoimmune diseases. Published in the journal Entropy but this is a very lucid interview and much more understandable:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_AHLDXF5aw
Maybe the ladies have more balls than their male counterparts. Maybe the media are cowards and don't want to jeopardize their advertisement revenue from the large pharmaceutical and agribusiness clients. One thing is for sure. Some of the lady scientists know how follow the scientific method to a "T" and can think outside the box!