Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Nobody is against equal opportunity. The problem is in trying to use unequal outcomes as proof of discrimination, oppressive gender norming, etc. and then demanding affirmative action (discrimination) to solve the alleged problem. Tell me, at what point would you be satisfied that women have equal opportunities to pursue the dry, abstract sciences? How many girls-only internship programs to you want before you'll accept that significantly less than half of the people with the interest and ability to do cold, dead science are female?
Why don't you ask the people doing the research.
I'm personally not advocating for affirmative action, I'm advocating for removal of societal barriers (as much as possible) in girls/women lives that steer them away from STEM.
You hire the best candidates, that's what you should do. The key is to grow the pool of women in STEM as much as possible so that more of these candidates just happen to be women.
Again, have you read any research or studies on this? You seem to think we're already there...but the research seems to suggest otherwise.
Female and male brains excel at different things. For example men tend to have better spatial recognition, they could be better drivers. The keyword here being could.... The rational side of women make them statistically less likely to have an accident. In other words they are less likely to say "Hey ladies, watch this".
If there is any difference in math skills I don't know and that can go both ways.
Females and males are certainly different in certain ways, but women are equally capable of conducting STEM work equally well. That is an important distinction.
From someone who works in STEM, the bigger problem is there's not enough women applying.
When I was in college we had no women in my graduating class. The classes ahead and behind us had like 1 or 2.
Exactly. That's the picture overall, so just to say "we want more women in that field of study" defies the common sense. Because they are not there in big numbers for a reason at the first place.
Quote:
Right now if you're a female engineer, the sky's the limit. Everybody wants to boost their percentage of female engineers. I've ever never seen a female engineer not get hired and promotions happen very quickly.
I've worked at countless places where we only had say 5 women to 15 men in engineering and 3 of them were in leadership.
There we go. I was raised by someone with a degree in math/physics and... she was an excellent, respected specialist in her area. A devoted employee who LOVED her job, but... she didn't have time for family. That's all to it.
Exactly. That's the picture overall, so just to say "we want more women in that field of study" defies the common sense. Because they are not there in big numbers for a reason at the first place.
Exactly - and that is the point. How do we grow the pool of women in STEM so that they are getting hired because they are the best candidates?
Quote:
Originally Posted by erasure
There we go. I was raised by someone with a degree in math/physics and... she was an excellent, respected specialist in her area. A devoted employee who LOVED her job, but... she didn't have time for family. That's all to it.
That is an aspect to this all, but it is not that simple. And it doesn't address why there are less women entering STEM in the beginning well before family years (family pressures feverishly become a bigger deal after they've started their degrees or their early careers).
I think there may be less here than meets the eye. GE complains that a small percentage of professional technical staff is female and will try to balance its entry-level group 50-50. I was in a technical firm that did just that--in fact it was fairly easy to hire women into the entry-level. What I noticed is that a much larger percentage of the women fell away from that career path than men over time. Many of them went to a career that was not so technically oriented. Others had families and then went on to other careers.
I'm not saying they all did, by any means, this effort will increase the representation of females in senior technical staff. But it ain't gonna be 50-50 for a long time.
Just like half the nursing field will never be male, no matter how much they try--but I do know a few male nurses.
The difference here is that there are many programs encouraging women into the STEM fields whereas you won't find much of any programs encouraging boys to go into the nursing and med tech fields. Why do we only focus on girls?
The difference here is that there are many programs encouraging women into the STEM fields whereas you won't find much of any programs encouraging boys to go into the nursing and med tech fields. Why do we only focus on girls?
Isn't basing hiring decisions on the basis of sex illegal?
This is a general goal. And it completely depends on what they're doing. If they're addressing gender imbalance by trying to better understand why it exists, and they help address those issues (such as helping address the specific reasons why women don't go into STEM fields early in life), then there is no issue.
There are ways to do this that aren't affirmative action or a quota system. You grow the pool of women in the field so that they become more of the qualified candidates. Once you have more and more qualified women in these fields, that creates a feedback loop to the younger girls and gets more interested in it (because they have more positive role models).
Some people are arguing that we're already there...I say they're ignoring the research that shows that we still have societal barriers in the way...certainly much less than before, but they're still there.
It's akin to the argument that because we elected a black president that things are all perfect on the race front. If only that were true...
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,381,135 times
Reputation: 40736
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scotty011
The best-qualified person should get the job regardless of race or gender. This should be done through testing and the ability to pass the tests.
All that need be said!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
