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Cornell Study: For STEM Tenure Track, Women Twice As Likely To Be Hired As Men
_Sharp'r_ writes In the first "empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members", Cornell University researchers found that when using identical qualifications, but changing the sex of the applicant, "women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields."
An anonymous reader links to the study itself.
I've been pushing my daughter in STEM and she's about to transition from HS to college.
If this keeps up, I can look forward to her not having to move home after college graduation!
You now have a basis to sue. Have at it.
So we'll see the opposite in nursing schools?
No? You must be full of shit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How is excluding someone from a job based solely on gender not sexism?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Affirmative action in the United States counteracts institutional and systemic discrimination against specific groups (often visible) minorities.
Affirmative action for women is not the same as sexism; it is a corrective for sexism.
You'll need to define those terms carefully before you have any hope of persuading us.
Nope.. because penis. Welcome to affirmative action, the newspeak term for discrimination against those who are not in a protected caste.
Sex based discrimination is sex based discrimination, whatever the motives behind it are. yes, affirmative action is a corrective for sexism, but it isn't a counter for it, and isn't that what we really want? If one institution discriminates against women, and another applies affirmative action as a corrective measure, we may end up with cosily balanced statistics (men & women being equally likely to be hired), but we actually end up with 2 institutions who discriminate based on sex, and where actual ability plays second fiddle.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
No it's not. It's the very same systemic/cultural/legal/economic discrimination its proponents claim to fight. It's extremely hypocritical to a point where I have to assume that its proponents do understand and have ulterior motives.
I have not.
I HAVE heard of men being run out of the nursing profession by women who don't want them there.
There's also education, where men elementary school teachers are frequently forced out by institutional sexism, but again, no one particularly cares about the lack of men teaching first grade.
I'm going to find it really hard to take any of this sexism bullshit seriously until I see a strong push to get half of all garbage collectors be women. Right now from my point of view it's all bullshit done by people who see nerds as a "soft target."
Before the comments explode into an orgy of heated and tedious argument (well ok, they already have), it's worth noting that the study didn't use statistics for actual hiring decisions. By the phrase "using actual faculty members," they just mean that they got a bunch of professors to participate in an experiment where they evaluate the suitability of various made-up candidates on paper. Meh. If they had real-world stats for this, I might actually be interested. How many men and how many women applied to different STEM faculty jobs in a given year, and who got hired? Simple - yet we don't have that information.
Only an idiot would bother trying to persuade someone called DoofusOfDeath of anything. It's clearly a pointless endeavour.
I find your logic compelling. I am now fully persuaded of the OP's assertion. Well done, sir.
Is it still sexism if it's correcting an existing sexist imbalance?
Yes. If gender is a consideration that influences the decision then it is by definition sexism. We can argue about whether it is justified or not (I think not) but it unquestionably IS sexism.
until then the choices are (A) preferentially hire women, or (B) hire an equal mix and wait until all the existing faculty retires (probably at least a generation or two) for the gender mix to equalize.
Incomplete set of choices. There are other options. The best option is to hire the most qualified individuals without regard to gender. Generally speaking unless there is a supply imbalance (which does happen sometimes) hiring the best people tends to take care of the diversity problems. Talent in STEM generally has little to do with gender or ethnicity or country of origin or age or even sexual orientation. Hire the best people and you'll get a diverse workforce in most cases rather naturally.
The problem is that people tend to hire who they are comfortable with rather than hire the best available candidates. This is how you end up with executive teams with nothing but old white men. Look at how much of a monoculture an organization is if you want to know whether they truly value identifying and promoting the best available people.
I should say that I'd be more strongly opposed to the practice if it were occurring in industry, but we're talking about a college
Makes no difference. College is just another type of industry. Hire the best people. Period.
Neutralizing sexual discrimination is a multi-generation endeavor, and one of the most important steps is to eliminate the gender bias in positions of power - which unfortunately requires either a period of systematic discrimination in the opposite direction, or a willingness to wait several more generations until everyone currently in the queue retires.
I really fucking hate social engineering. So until we reach this fantasy utopia of yours those of us that you are discriminating against just have to roll over? Because previous generations discriminated in the opposite direction? I'm to be disadvantaged because of my gender based on the actions of my parents and grandparents?
There's a reason why corruption of blood is proscribed in our political system. I fail to see why corruption of gender or race is justifiable. You're punishing me for the actions of third parties, many of whom died years before I was born, and you really think this is sound public policy?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Where I live, Florida, minorities and women can get small business loans and grants far easier than White males can. I'd suggest that all these "oppressed" people start their own businesses instead of forcing existing business owners to bend to their will. How many times do we have to pick someone up before we expect them to stand on their own? If women and minorities are given every opportunity plus extra help from the local and federal governments to succeed but still fail to do so... is it really the fault of Whites?
Some things need to be said...
I was replying to a comment, so you can take your purity test and shove it up your ass.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Women thrive on social skills, it is impossible to encourage them to to have rubbish social skills. It is precisely because science and engineering do not foster social interaction that women find them, frankly, boring. So they eschew these careers.
Academic is a special case. They will accommodate oddballs more readily than business. You can be terrible socially in the business world, but that doesn't make you an oddball. It doesn't surprise me that academics misread the lack of women in science and engineering, they are quick to blame everything of social constructs because that is how they view the world. Thus academics see themselves as fixing the problems "created" by the business world, and tend to hire oddballs and women.
^^^^ THIS ++
There are dozens and dozens of programs for my daughter to participate in STEM. ZERO for my son. There are programs sponsored by local colleges, and high schools and software companies. Robotics competitions focused on girls.
ZERO for boys.
It is ridiculous at the opportunities cascading down upon my daughter (I am taking full advantage of it). Free, Awesome, comprehensive, ubiquitous.
ZERO for my son.
So anyone saying that girls are being discouraged from doing STEM is ignorant of the current situation in the world
blah
Well, presuming that women and men are equally qualified (which was one of the explicitly stated premises of the study), then that would make for a 50-50 mix, would it not?
No it would not because there are more men in the workplace than women overall, largely due to traditional gender roles. Furthermore there is an imbalance in some professions regarding the number of people that enter the profession. More men in engineering and construction. More women in nursing and clerical. Those issues occur FAR earlier than any hiring decision so it is not a 50-50 mix and probably never will be.
It will be rare that a workforce exactly matches the overall population ratio and doing so should never be the explicit goal. The goal is to create an environment where the only meaningful consideration is merit. If you do that well then you'll almost certainly have as diverse a workforce as is currently possible.
Yes, in a magical world populated by unicorns, rational humans, and the ability to accurately evaluate people's qualifications before hiring them, there are potentially better options. But we're stuck in this one.
Nice strawman. We don't even measure the qualifications we know about accurately or uniformly. Give the same resume with gender being the only thing changed and you get a different result? That means we aren't hiring based on merit. We're hiring based on societal pressure or comfort or some other principle.
Let things be at least somewhat "corrected" for a generation or two
Let's start with getting more male teachers. Obviously, all these female teachers have the wrong influence on young girls.
Murse here.
There is the start of whispering campaign against male nurses for risk of sexual impropriety. There are certain positions men are forbidden from bidding on under the auspices of "patient sensitivity" which don't seem to apply to people preferring a male nurse (Muslims, Hispanics). Those people need get a grip and join the 21st century. It's unspoken that no men are allowed on oby/gyn or peds unless you are a women or flammingly gay. Any "sensitive" procedures should have a female present just in case. Everything else you mention sounds about right.
Oh, and you will have to walk a fine line of not saying anything that could be misconstrued as harassment and appearing to be gay for thinking it is improper to date anyone at work. Of course being a fly on the wall to your female colleagues conversations is enough to put you off from dating forever.
On the plus side, there is a camaraderie with working with women that is absent from working with men (frequent potlucks, that sort of thing) and for the most part the glass escalator doesn't exist except in certain, traditionally female areas.
What the fuck? How about no, we don't spend two generations fucking over men purely because they happen to have a cock from birth.
I think you're a complete cunt.
How are we subjecting any women to a sexist disadvantage if we grant them equal education, equal opportunities, equal choices?
What the fuck are you talking about disadvantages men *might* suffer when men are already more likely to commit suicide, more likely to die in the workplace, have lower life expectancy, work longer hours, are more likely to have mental health issues, are more likely to be homeless, are treated far far worse by the family and criminal court systems?
Oversimplified - give them equality, or they will quite likely take superiority.
If you're a man aged 30 or under you're already suffering from inferior treatment by society as a whole. Too fucking late.
Tenure is rapidly going away, partially as more universities are replacing regular faculty with adjunct faculty and using the availability of the latter as justification for worse treatment of the former. Go look at the closest 4-year school to where you live and see how many tenure-track STEM openings they have. Then look this summer to see how many openings they have for adjuncts.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Seriously, I'd love to hear suggestions. I've got a niece in the first grade, brilliant little girl...
I hear you. Best current evidence is that the most influential thing to help girls find their way is to have a good role model. I heard about a study where the places that have the largest proportion of girls going into STEM is in areas like North Carolina's Research Triangle where there are a lot of good female role models working in the fields. Make sure she knows it is a real option. A good friend of my wife's is a doctor with young girls and she's made sure they know that such things are available to them and the kids are actually quite enthusiastic about science. (smart kids too so that helps)
I do a lot of coaching of high school age kids. One generalism I've noticed is that in sports boys need to play well to feel good about themselves. Girls are often the reverse. They seem to need to feel good about themselves to play well. No idea why that is but it seems to be frequently true. Maybe that might help you in some way. Good luck!
Insane standards? No... my standards are quite reasonable and absent those standards you have bullshit.
The standards I'm talking about are the kind that required typically any serious empirical science.
As to the conclusion I draw from the whole thing?... review the posts from before and you'll see that my statement was that YOUR study was not something you could use to slam dunk your position. That it merely justified further study. Period.
And this? Same thing. Further study. I'll wait for a real study to be done. This study was done by what... the Cornell center for women in stem? What the fuck kind of department is that?
Can you imagine a Cornell center for men in stem?
The problem so often with these departments is that they're run like creationist departments. They start with the premise that the world is 6000 years old and then look for evidence of that. Which is not how science works.
In real science, you examine the data and then try to draw conclusions from the data without lots of stupid preconceptions.
As to how we miraculously got a study that contradicted the first... I find it as baffling as you do because I remain convinced that the whole field of study is hopelessly compromised. It is sort of like Iran taking a break from saying "death to America" to write love letters to the Jews suddenly. So I'm confused... we'll see what happens. I'm sure another study that will contradict this one is forthcoming and it will mean no more to me then the last two because they're not holding to "my standards"... and until they do... I don't really see how anyone can take it seriously. Not with any intellectual integrity.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I work at a hospital. I hear nurses. This is what they talk about. *shrug*
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I am Hispanic guy living in Latin America. Having read Slashdot for ten years, it does not cease to amuse me the fact that most members of the community are very left-wing and their support for left-wing ideas is strong. In spite of being mostly males, mostly straight, mostly bright and mostly whites.
It's like watching Jews cheering Nazism. I don't get it, maybe because you have to be American to understand this self-sabotage.
If "affirmative action" is implemented, who do you think it's going to be the candidate with better qualifications that does not get the job, because there is a woman, a minority or a gay? It's going to be you. (The same with college admissions).
If more civil servants are hired or there is a new program to help "minorities", who is going to pay for them? The woman who is living off welfare and have three kids from different fathers. No, you are going to pay.
If there is a divorce, who is going to lose half his salary and lose his kids forever? The wife? No, you.
Maybe stories like this will awake you. But maybe not. You were brainwashed very well by your teachers and professors since the kindergarten. Now, go back to work and to slave yourselves, that there is a lot of unproductive people to feed.
As I said, it's amusing. American people are strange.
First, I wasn't trying to "prove" anything. I was providing an example of the work culture in nursing, in the context of someone referencing a "glass escalator" for male nurses, as if it's a super-easy profession for them to slip in to.
If I told you that engineering is super-easy for women to get ahead in, because (as this study suggests) a female engineer would have no problem getting a job, you'd call me naive, would you not? After all, there was a story on /. in the last 48 hours chiding Microsoft for having poor diversity numbers. This is a common refrain in tech reporting. "Only 6% of workers at MegaTechCorp are $MINORITY_TYPE." So naturally if you've got an equally talented white man and black woman applying for the job, give the job to the black woman. That's two diversity boxes checked off! She on paper she should get the job more easily.
However, a black woman will probably tell you it's not so easy, because "culture" and "glass ceiling." When you are the minority member of any group, as nice and friendly (and oblivious) as that group is, you never fit in. The majority has a culture different from yours. "Not fitting in" has all sorts of ramifications for any social endeavor, especially career advancement. It's a lot easier to get the promotion, or to get your ideas recognized and advanced, to get your project idea approved, when you fit in, people like you and they listen to you (because they are like you).
So some people respond by avoiding places where they don't feel like they fit in. This is the primary "why there aren't girls in tech" explanation. There was a story on /. a few months back about a study where the psychologists decorated a room in stereotypically geeky male tech-guy stuff, like Star Trek posters, and then gave presentations about tech careers to men and women. Then repeated the experiment without the decoration. And women polled afterwards were less likely to be interested in tech careers when they were surrounded by the Star Trek stuff that was, perhaps, not as a big a part of their culture. Not entirely surprising, is it? It would be harder to advance (or simply feel satisfied) in a place where the culture does not include you. When you're on a team of 10 software developers and during the minutes waiting for the weekly scrum to start the 9 white geeky guys are talking about Grand Theft Auto V, the Indian girl who doesn't play video games has little shot at being included in the camaraderie. It is less likely her ideas will be considered as opposed to the guy with the best theory about where the jet pack is really hidden.
Or, you can assimilate. Which changes you in ways you may not like. I read an article written by a black woman in tech who had an identity crisis after a few years in the industry, because she realized she no longer recognized herself. She wanted to fit in, so she wound up, mostly subconsciously, changing the things she liked, the things she said, the way she spoke and the way she acted to fit in with her white male coworkers. But she should have it made! Black and female! Easy hire! But then there is the whole "culture" and "advancement" thing.
My own limited experience is as the only white guy on a team of 6 Indians at a data warehousing consulting gig. I didn't have much to contribute to the discussions about cricket (although I really enjoyed learning). And I didn't mind that the majority of our team lunches were at an Indian restaurant, because I love Indian food. And the really funny part is that my wife and I cook very, very, very hot food, and my coworkers couldn't believe I could eat spicier food than they could without sweating. However, that was short term and I wasn't competing with those guys for advancement.
I digress. I was talking about culture. And cultural differences will absolutely impact your career prospects. As a male nurse, you will never fit in. The promotion to head nurse will almost always go to a female nurse, as she is most likely to have the "best relati
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
This story included just enough SJW dog-whistles (like "this is a propitious time for women beginning careers in academic science" and "What we found shocked us") to make the SJWs point to it, without realizing it actually demolishes them.
Not all that many more. NPR misrepresents the situation. For as long as the US Department of Labor has kept records, men have been prevalent in computing.
Engineering has been male dominated throughout history.
The whole "men pushed women out" narrative doesn't hold water.