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.