Slashdot Mirror
Study: Science Still Seen As a Male Profession
sciencehabit sends news of a study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology which found that science is still perceived as a predominantly male profession across the world. The results were broken out by country, and while the overall trend stayed consistent throughout (PDF), there were variations in perception. For explicit bias: "Countries where this association was strongest included South Africa and Japan. The United States ranked in the middle, with a score similar to Austria, Mexico, and Brazil. Portugal, Spain, and Canada were among the countries where the explicit bias was weakest." For implicit bias: "Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, and Sweden were among the countries with the highest implicit bias scores. The United States again came in at the middle of the pack, scoring similarly to Singapore. Portugal, Spain, and Mexico had among the lowest implicit bias scores, though the respondents still associated science more with men than with women."
Teaching is still seen as a woman's profession. Your point?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
I just got back from a scientific conference with thousands of attendees from around the world. There were plenty of women around (still less than half, of course), but virtually no black people, and not too many Hispanics either. Lots of white people and Europeans and Asians. Just an observation - I'm not trying to emphasize any particular issue or value anything over anything else.
(unless she's a drug addict or something, then *maybe* - only maybe - the father might get custody)
Nope. I know a guy who is divorced; he's a perfectly decent guy, has a steady job, and loves his daughter, but is only allowed to see her for a few weeks a year. His ex-wife is a jobless drug addict who depends on her new husband for income, and she's even shown up to court high before. But she gets custody of their daughter, because she's female and therefore is obviously a better caretaker.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Women are still going to be 100% of the mothers and men 100% of the fathers.
Not necessarily. Men can carry a baby to term via embryo implantation and abdominal pregnancy. A gynecologist once discussed abdominal pregnancy on a TV show, and mentioned that it was possible for a man to gestate a baby, but she didn't think any man would be interested. She later claimed that she was contacted by dozens of men willing to volunteer.
Disclaimer: I was not one of the volunteers.
As long as science is mostly male, it will be seen as a mostly male profession.
I didn't know the tautology club was having a secret meeting here. But seriously, you know what could fix this imbalance? Maybe women who have an interest and the knack for science could, I dunno, go to school for it and become scientists themselves? Then it might balance the gender ratio a bit. I mean, it's worth a shot.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Should women be given free choice or not? One wonders exactly what the social-justice crowd had in mind.
The vast majority of women choose to study social sciences. Men don't.
Should their freedom of choice be curtailed? Should we 'force' women to study something they're not interested in? Because if such inhibition of personal freedoms is not acceptable then perhaps we should stop treating these obvious gender-aligned differences in preference as "flaws", and start treating them as "features" of our species.
The social justice crowd would of course insist that it's all "nurture" and not "nature". But how many times must this absurd belief system be obliterated with logic for it to finally disappear? ---> https://vimeo.com/19707588
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Men can carry a baby to term via embryo implantation and abdominal pregnancy.
This is so insanely dangerous (to both parent and fetus), that any physician who assisted in setting such a thing up would be in danger of having their license yanked. A number of healthy live births have been reported, but most often this special case of ectopic pregnancy ends up being surgically aborted -- because when allowed to proceed the likely scenario is massive hemorrhage followed by demise of the fetus (and maybe the parent too).
That being said, it makes for an interesting thought experiment. You'd probably want to select for a male embryo to implant, as the man's hormones will cause abnormal genitalia in a female infant. You might be able to alleviate this problem with testosterone suppression therapy (after all, females normally have a small amount of circulating testosterone naturally -- but it really doesn't take much excess to virilize a female fetus). What to do about other hormones is also an interesting question -- for instance, how necessary would it be to supplement progesterone, for instance?
Another important issue is the immunological tolerance that occurs in the female, we don't know if males will respond appropriately to with induction of the special partially-suppressed state that occurs during pregnancy. We also don't really know what all the hormones and other substances pumped out by the placenta and fetus would do to the male host.