Slashdot Mirror
Study: Belief That Some Fields Require "Brilliance" May Keep Women Out
sciencehabit writes Certain scientific fields require a special type of brilliance, according to conventional wisdom. And a new study suggests that this belief, as misguided as it may be, helps explain the underrepresentation of women in those fields. The authors found that fields in which inborn ability is prized over hard work produced relatively fewer female Ph.D.s. This trend, based on 2011 data from the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates, also helps explain why gender ratios don't follow the simplified STEM/non-STEM divide in some fields, including philosophy and biology, they conclude.
There have been some assertions that there are more smart women on average than men, but that the men are better represented at the extremes. Which is to say, men are not as "smart" as women on average, but the few men that are brilliant outnumber the women. Of course, the flip side is that men have more complete idiots than the female gender does.
Not quite. Average IQ is the same for men and women, but the bell curve is flatter for men, with a longer tail. More women than men are close-to-average IQ, more men than women are far-from average IQ (in both directions).
How important IQ is is a different question, but the measure is repeatable across a population - there's a real effect here.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
An N of 1800 isn't unacceptable, but the thing is studies like this very often use rigged questions designed to produce the answer the authors want.
The N of the study isn't the only thing affecting the statistical significance. A response rate that low tells you that you very likely have hidden selection bias. In this case, the only people responding might well have been blowhard assholes with nothing better to do than respond to random surveys somebody emailed to them.
I can name:
Heather Couper (astronomer, who (in keeping with the conversation) received a letter from the late, great Sir Patrick Moore when she was 16 that said, among other things, that being a girl would not be detrimental to a career in astronomy. That letter she read in its entirety at his memorial service.)
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (made the first direct observation of a radio pulsar)
Jane Goodall (primatologist)
Hedy LaMarr (spare-time actress, primarily an inventor who gave us spread spectrum and randomised frequency hopping through her work on torpedo guidance systems)
Marie Curie (chemist/physicist, first double Nobel winner and only double winner in two different fields)
Merit-Ptah (earliest known named female physician)
Aglaonike (Greek astronomer who developed an accurate mathematical model to predict eclipses)
Mary the Jewess (invented the double boiler)
Florence Nightingale (established the London School of Nursing and laid the framework for the NHS which wasn't to bear fruit until after her death)
There are MANY more. I don't get what the problem is except the *lack of public acknowledgement of women in science* which can be placed entirely on the shoulders of the Church.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
come to Sweden where we moved out of the jurassic era a long time ago. I share the 18 months parental leave equally with my wife, since in Sweden we place value on raising our children and in involving both parents, partly for the sake of the parents and childs relationship but partly to avoid the trap of women automatically suffering from the career downsides and reduction in pension later in life.
No. You seem to have failed at reading my response. It's not an all or nothing statement so I don't know why you thought that.
The bottom line is, you better be damned smart if you plan to make a career in theoretical physics. Mediocre gets you a degree (maybe), but not a job (besides teaching something physics related at community college). Being damned smart is an example of innate ability, which this 'study' dumps on. It operates from the common feminist (and socialist) assumption that we are all intrinsically equal, differing only in motivation and level of 'oppression' and 'privilege.' That IS bullshit. There's a big difference in innate ability, psychology, (and, most likely, neurology as well) between the nerd who was playing with computers since age 6 and ends up at rensselaer polytech, and the valleygirl or dudebro who decided on computer science at a community college while having little computer literacy beyond facebook.
Sure, working hard is a big part of it, and is required to get anywhere in life, but for certain disciplines, only top tier intellect has the talent to get anywhere. Meritocracy should apply equally to both men and women, not 'affirmative action' which is just newspeak for privileging castes. I know I would not make a good theoretical physicist, so I didn't go for that major. Dumbing it down, even if it's just the 'marketing' for job posts and degree programs in order to 'diversify' the classrooms, will lead a lot of people astray. Better for the would-bes to know up front it takes a lot of smarts to be good at it. High IQ is largely determined by genetics, just like looks and athletic aptitude.
If you simply want the best analysts, listing the requirements for the position should be all that's required, and if that simple list turns women away, then it's on them that they let their self-doubt rule their decision not to apply. Biasing your job postings (and I assume your workplace dynamics) so that they appeal to women also means you are biasing them away from men. The differences between how the two sexes approach work come straight from their differing psychology, so there's no getting around this. There's a culture wide push nowadays to stamp out male 'spaces' in the workplace in favor of female ones, which is just as oppressive to men as feminists claim the 'patriarchy' conspiracy is to women, except that there's plenty of proof for the former, as your stated actions prove.