You went pretty quickly to referencing the research that women and men have different interests and different cognitive profiles. While it is easily available, it is not well-known. Most journalistic articles and certainly most advocates, don't want to get into the real data that deeply. They like nice, packaged short narratives about CEOs of tech startups that they can club people with.
Yes it's never been easy to have a sane discussion of the natural place of men and women in the scheme of things. It mostly gets bedeviled by sex mind-games: feminist man-bitching on the one hand and male bravado on the other. In my view that sane discussion would need to encompass a complex reality in which some women can make great leaders and chief executives but most women are happy to inhabit a basically semi-patriarchal world.
I’ve always challenged people railing about the ‘women in STEM’ problem to ‘fix’ the other problem of the fact that 95% of primary education graduates are female. All those little boys have no role model and no one who understands their experience and education needs. I wonder what the ADHD diagnosis rates would be if we had a gender parity in classroom education…
The one number that I would question is the assumption that professors in different fields are paid the same. When I, as a STEM professor, collaborate with someone from the humanities, my salary is almost always considerably higher than theirs. I am "sure" that CS professors are paid more than social-work professors.
Interesting and useful read. I do have one quibble/question. While it’s true that in broad terms, we can group pediatrics and internal medicine in a single bracket, and chemistry and social work professors in another bracket, most research subjects would be aware that there are still significant pay differences between each of those two paired occupations. At my university, social work professors are paid considerably less than their counterparts in chemistry at a given rank, and moreover, social work is far more dominated by lecturers, who lack possibilities for advancement, tenure, and good pay. Research subjects will not have seen the data I’m privy to, but they will be well aware of the status difference in the two fields across society as a whole.
The answer to the question of “what level...” is the same regardless of which “underrepresented” cohort is under query. The answer outside that cohort will vary. The answer inside always will slope asymptotically toward 100%. All - ALL - “equal rights” movements are about superiority, not equality.
Thank you for this very thought-provoking piece. Data are always remarkably revealing. Of course, you are correct in that cognitive models of the world will always set the epistemological structures in terms of which people interpret reality. We also see this in the interpretation of academic performance. For instance: "When ‘Black’ & ‘Hispanic’ Students Outscore ‘Asian’ & ‘White’ Students on the ACT, Nobody Notices" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/when-black-and-hispanic-students ...As a biological psychologist, I'm not sure if one can ever change these fundamental cognitive structures once they are strongly established, not that we shouldn't keep trying! Thank you again. Sincerely, Frederick
Sorry if this is a dumb question: what is an "MTurk" worker, referenced at the beginning of the discussion of Study 2? And thanks for this very interesting piece!
We are talking about the 21st C, not the 19th or even the 20th. Arguing from history is a sure sign that one hasn't got an argument from the present. You don't like the data from the college students, so you speculate on ways it might be false, but provide no evidence. Do you want to know what it would be at another college? Go find out yourself if it's so easy. As to the adjustable categories of STEM and HEAL, chemical researcher is always going to be in STEM and social worker is always going to be in HEAL. They are only adjustable at the margins, and no you can't prove just about anything.
You went pretty quickly to referencing the research that women and men have different interests and different cognitive profiles. While it is easily available, it is not well-known. Most journalistic articles and certainly most advocates, don't want to get into the real data that deeply. They like nice, packaged short narratives about CEOs of tech startups that they can club people with.
Yes it's never been easy to have a sane discussion of the natural place of men and women in the scheme of things. It mostly gets bedeviled by sex mind-games: feminist man-bitching on the one hand and male bravado on the other. In my view that sane discussion would need to encompass a complex reality in which some women can make great leaders and chief executives but most women are happy to inhabit a basically semi-patriarchal world.
I’ve always challenged people railing about the ‘women in STEM’ problem to ‘fix’ the other problem of the fact that 95% of primary education graduates are female. All those little boys have no role model and no one who understands their experience and education needs. I wonder what the ADHD diagnosis rates would be if we had a gender parity in classroom education…
Very interesting and thought provoking.
The one number that I would question is the assumption that professors in different fields are paid the same. When I, as a STEM professor, collaborate with someone from the humanities, my salary is almost always considerably higher than theirs. I am "sure" that CS professors are paid more than social-work professors.
Interesting and useful read. I do have one quibble/question. While it’s true that in broad terms, we can group pediatrics and internal medicine in a single bracket, and chemistry and social work professors in another bracket, most research subjects would be aware that there are still significant pay differences between each of those two paired occupations. At my university, social work professors are paid considerably less than their counterparts in chemistry at a given rank, and moreover, social work is far more dominated by lecturers, who lack possibilities for advancement, tenure, and good pay. Research subjects will not have seen the data I’m privy to, but they will be well aware of the status difference in the two fields across society as a whole.
The answer to the question of “what level...” is the same regardless of which “underrepresented” cohort is under query. The answer outside that cohort will vary. The answer inside always will slope asymptotically toward 100%. All - ALL - “equal rights” movements are about superiority, not equality.
Thank you for this very thought-provoking piece. Data are always remarkably revealing. Of course, you are correct in that cognitive models of the world will always set the epistemological structures in terms of which people interpret reality. We also see this in the interpretation of academic performance. For instance: "When ‘Black’ & ‘Hispanic’ Students Outscore ‘Asian’ & ‘White’ Students on the ACT, Nobody Notices" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/when-black-and-hispanic-students ...As a biological psychologist, I'm not sure if one can ever change these fundamental cognitive structures once they are strongly established, not that we shouldn't keep trying! Thank you again. Sincerely, Frederick
Sorry if this is a dumb question: what is an "MTurk" worker, referenced at the beginning of the discussion of Study 2? And thanks for this very interesting piece!
We are talking about the 21st C, not the 19th or even the 20th. Arguing from history is a sure sign that one hasn't got an argument from the present. You don't like the data from the college students, so you speculate on ways it might be false, but provide no evidence. Do you want to know what it would be at another college? Go find out yourself if it's so easy. As to the adjustable categories of STEM and HEAL, chemical researcher is always going to be in STEM and social worker is always going to be in HEAL. They are only adjustable at the margins, and no you can't prove just about anything.