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."

Comments

And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nursing and Childcare are *still* seen as female professions. Who gives a fuck?

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gender studies majors do.

See, they make their career out of pushing to get more women into careers that nobody is keeping women out of but in which there are not nearly as many women as there are men, because women choose to go into things like... gender studies... instead.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nursing and Childcare are *still* seen as female professions. Who gives a fuck?

All the divorced men who get to see their kids every other weekend because the courts say women are 'better' at nursing and childcare (unless she's a drug addict or something, then *maybe* - only maybe - the father might get custody). If the guys are really lucky they might even get to keep enough to survive out of their paycheck too.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice how there's never any headlines proclaiming the travesties of the coal miner gap, or how homeless bottle picking is seen as a male profession.

Re:And?

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:And?

[Ol Olsoc]

That's not the point though.

You can't force people to do things. Women already want to be scientists.

And women already are scientists - and engineers. I've worked with a dozen or more - I wasn't keeping count though.

Perhaps they would be a good place to start when trying to get more women involved in STEM careers.

And that is the strangest thing, we don't seem to hear much about women who are already in STEM, only how men are keeping them out of STEM.

Want a role model for women in STEM? Ty Hedy Lamarr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Here is the co-inventor of spread spectrum radio and a few other things, extremely intelligent, and if it important to anyone, stunningly beautiful.

But there are obviously many more. Why don't we hear more about them?

STEM, especially for the Scientists and engineers is not a career for the easily dissuaded. You are studying while the MBA and liberal arts students are partying - that's not hype.

And to claim that some woman has been so negatively affected by a photo of a playboy model's face, or a sophmoric joke about a dongle that it causes rejection as a career is as sensible as saying looking at a Barbie doll caused a girl to become bulemic. A scientist would tell you that the eating problem already existed, and at worst, the Barbie Doll, was merely a fixation.

In the end, the women in STEM movement does women a terrible disservice, painting them as weak creatures, all too easily dissuaded from careers that they would otherwise excel in, just by sexual references or distractions.

Re:And?

[Guppy]

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.

Feminism Friday

[Bathroom Humor]

Came a day late this week?

What's more obvious to me ...

[Egg Sniper]

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.

Re:Genderwar Bait Thread

[Tanuki64]

I know. So what? They want hatred. They get hatred. For serious discussions I go elsewhere. I would never write anything constructive on /. anymore.

And in other news

[gweihir]

Far more men than women are interested in joining the sciences as a career.

So really, Science is predominantly male and that is by choice of the women. The good thing is that any woman that wants to be a scientist and has the talents and skills can be one in the western world. The reality is that most do not want to. Deal with it.

the corporations need more cheap labor

[rightwingLeftist]

feminism expands the pool of labor.... growing the supply of labor faster than the demand for labor suppresses wage growth, which increases profit growth. That means more money for corporate shareholders and more money spent on advertising in the corporate media. Won't someone PLEASE think of the corporations, the plutocrats that own them, and the media that is supported by them???!!

Re:Unfortunately, this is women's perception

[Mr. Shotgun]

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.