What if men are just better?

[barbos]

Better yet, how about we don't hold anybody's gender for or against them? Just because women on average are this or men on average are that doesn't mean anything about any particular individual woman or man.

That would be reasonable, of course that means you would have to accept the fact that you are not going to get anything even remotely close to equal representation for women in math departments.

 

[starwater]

Better yet, how about we don't hold anybody's gender for or against them? Just because women on average are this or men on average are that doesn't mean anything about any particular individual woman or man.

That would be reasonable, of course that means you would have to accept the fact that you are not going to get anything even remotely close to equal representation for women in math departments.

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

 

[barbos]

Better yet, how about we don't hold anybody's gender for or against them? Just because women on average are this or men on average are that doesn't mean anything about any particular individual woman or man.

That would be reasonable, of course that means you would have to accept the fact that you are not going to get anything even remotely close to equal representation for women in math departments.

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

CPA is not math. And how do you know you are normal? Autism in women is hard to diagnose.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Better yet, how about we don't hold anybody's gender for or against them? Just because women on average are this or men on average are that doesn't mean anything about any particular individual woman or man.

That would be reasonable, of course that means you would have to accept the fact that you are not going to get anything even remotely close to equal representation for women in math departments.

I have no problem with that. Nor would I care if the majority in nursing programs turn out to be women. So long as everyone has an equal opportunity for what they wish to go for, I am not concerned with gender distribution outcomes. I'd think it rather sexist if somebody demanded an even distribution just for the sake of the distribution.

 

[Toni]

?

It depends. In a sex-segregated high school, it'll be one or the other. Otherwise, both.

I'm not sure what your comment is about.

Yeah, I think that's the point. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that schools teach demographics, not individuals. It doesn't matter if one gender in general could be better than another gender in any academic field if individuals from both genders can excel in it. Which is why we teach students as individuals, not gender demographics.

Yeah, but some people are demanding that we don't teach individuals, but rather that we make sure that we are teaching males and females at equal rates at every level of the subject, and that we don't hire individuals but rather make sure to hire equal numbers of males and females to perform the jobs which apply what was taught.

That is what underlies the aggressive push to increase females in the STEM fields, as though unequal representation in those fields is inherently a bad and unjust thing.

That's the OPs point. Is that a reasonable thing to expect, if there are differences in ability?

My 2 posts above try to take a nuanced stance that considers competing values and goals on the issue.

I don’t know anybody who thinks that we must hire equal numbers of male and female anything.

I don’t think that any thinking person believes that everybody should be taught math (or science or Literature or art or anything) at the same rate or st or to the same level.

The push to encourage more women in STEM is not to mandate some quota but to encourage males and females to pursue STEM education and careers (or whatever path) as their interests and talents lead them, and recognizing and removing barriers that discourage or event prevent such pursuits. An equal distribution among genders might or might not be reached but barriers should be removed.

I’m not trying to scare you but women are more than ready, willing and able to tackle all STEM fields.

 

[Toni]

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

CPA is not math. And how do you know you are normal? Autism in women is hard to diagnose.

If you would like to PM me your mailing address, I’d be delighted to mail you copies of Hidden Figures and Lab Girls.

Open invite. If amazon will deliver to your address, I’ll send you copies.

 

[Toni]

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

CPA is not math. And how do you know you are normal? Autism in women is hard to diagnose.

WTF?

 

[barbos]

Better yet, how about we don't hold anybody's gender for or against them? Just because women on average are this or men on average are that doesn't mean anything about any particular individual woman or man.

That would be reasonable, of course that means you would have to accept the fact that you are not going to get anything even remotely close to equal representation for women in math departments.

I have no problem with that. Nor would I care if the majority in nursing programs turn out to be women. So long as everyone has an equal opportunity for what they wish to go for, I am not concerned with gender distribution outcomes. I'd think it rather sexist if somebody demanded an even distribution just for the sake of the distribution.

Good for you. But there are people who are bothered by gender distributions.

 

[Toni]

Better yet, how about we don't hold anybody's gender for or against them? Just because women on average are this or men on average are that doesn't mean anything about any particular individual woman or man.

That would be reasonable, of course that means you would have to accept the fact that you are not going to get anything even remotely close to equal representation for women in math departments.

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

Barbos not only will stick with that misogynistic statement but he’s doubling down, with a side of projection.

 

[barbos]

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

CPA is not math. And how do you know you are normal? Autism in women is hard to diagnose.

If you would like to PM me your mailing address, I’d be delighted to mail you copies of Hidden Figures and Lab Girls.

Open invite. If amazon will deliver to your address, I’ll send you copies.

Hidden Figures is not math either.
Here is a woman who was doing math https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani

 

[AirPoh]

Better yet, how about we don't hold anybody's gender for or against them? Just because women on average are this or men on average are that doesn't mean anything about any particular individual woman or man.

That would be reasonable, of course that means you would have to accept the fact that you are not going to get anything even remotely close to equal representation for women in math departments.

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

Looking out at the floor in my office, it's about 50/50.
Looking in the actual offices it's a little less, about 65/35.

 

[ronburgundy]

Note that all of following replies apply only to situations where an actual gender difference in ability or interest exists (regardless, of whether it is "innate" of developed from prior experience).

Yeah, but some people are demanding that we don't teach individuals, but rather that we make sure that we are teaching males and females at equal rates at every level of the subject, and that we don't hire individuals but rather make sure to hire equal numbers of males and females to perform the jobs which apply what was taught.

And if we didn't have a nation of 325 million people and were a commune of 25 people, that could create a legitimate problem.

First, you started out by claiming that we should just ignore gender and teach individuals. Now, your completely changing tracks and saying that there is no problem with treating students by their gender rather than as individuals. Second,he size of the nation has zero relevance to the problems caused. Each classroom and each job is of a very finite size with only a tiny fraction (often 25 or less people) of the national population even interested in it, let alone qualified to perform well in it. Demands for equal representation are not merely made at the national aggregate level, but in regard to each individual class, school, company, etc.. Individual schools and companies are attacked and pressured to have equal representation within their tiny samples. If there are gender differences in interest or ability (whether or not those differences are innate or socialized), this pressure guarantees that highly less capable and interested individuals will be shoehorned into these classrooms and jobs, solely to meet what amount to a 50/50 quota. Plus there is the problems caused by those in charge being presumed to be discriminatory whenever there is unequal representation, along with many wasted resources put toward trying fix problems of discrimination where they do not actually exist.

This pressure at he non-national, fine-grained level is ensured b/c people do not grasp the logical implications of sample size and its relevance to enforcing such quotas local vs. national levels. But even if somehow people magically came to understand statistics and probability and only expected national level equality in representation, it would still cause a problem of people with less capability and motivation being shoehorned into limited positions.

That is what underlies the aggressive push to increase females in the STEM fields, as though unequal representation lose fields is inherently a bad and unjust thing.

Is that what is actually happening? In general, my experience with people bitching about schools seem to actually know very little about it. In my school district there are several schools, regular, stem concentrated, arts.

Come on. There is a huge push in education to increase female representation in STEM. The department of ED, NSF, Dept of commerce and many other government and private/activist organizations focus heavily on it in both their rhetoric and funding initiatives. The Wiki article on "Women in STEM" fields has 147 references (many times more than most wiki articles), because there are hundreds of articles published every year claiming that unequal representation in STEM is a serious problem that need to be solved. A number of those references are to statements published by several different government agencies framing fewer women in STEM as inherently a problem toward which finite resources should be spent to fix it. Again, I am not saying they are wrong, just that they are most definitely acting of though it is a problem, and if it is in fact a result of different abilities and interests, then their actions are likely to cause real problems and redirected finite resources away from other real problems.

That's the OPs point. Is that a reasonable thing to expect, if there are differences in ability?

My 2 posts above try to take a nuanced stance that considers competing values and goals on the issue.

The OP brought up genders and alleged generalities, which is just dumb. So many fields consisted primarily of just white males. Was it because women couldn't play in an orchestra, design bridges, or play basketball?

The unqualified generality of the thread title is, like most headlines, sensationalist. But nothing in the OP itself implies that there are no areas where women were and are under represented for unjust discriminatory reasons. The OP gives specific examples of areas, such as math-related fields where it might be unreasonable and destructive to expect equal gender representation if at least some of the differences are due to differences in particular relevant skills. Although Metaphor doesn't say it, I read his OP as suggesting that it would be wise not to treat unequal representation as a problem in itself, but rather treat active discrimination and cultural biases as problems and not to assume that unequal representation is reliable evidence of such problems.

We need to provide a venue for students to excel at both what they are good at and what they can do for a living.

Stuff is getting extremely complicated, really quickly in the world. We are losing millions and millions of jobs to innovation, machines, and productivity, and the education system is doing its darnedest to keep up.

I agree with that, but that is precisely why we need schools not to waste resources trying to manufacture artificial equality in what different people study and go onto do for a living. We need schools to help direct people towards what they are most likely to excel at and to enjoy. That requires ignoring demographics and not trying to equalize representation for it's own sake, but rather attend to the objective indicators of potential talent and interest within each individual and if that produces uneven distribution of genders across various fields then so be it. That said, we do need to make sure that prejudices about who is likely to be good and interested in something are kept in check. But, focusing upon equal representation does not achieve that and can do harm.

Heck, in the end, Arts might be the only employable field left after AI steals what is left.

I don't know, I would bet that AI will soon be able to create art (music, painting) that most audiences find more interesting than most human created art.
Which is more a slight on the general public and their tastes than on the arts.

 

[Toni]

If you would like to PM me your mailing address, I’d be delighted to mail you copies of Hidden Figures and Lab Girls.

Open invite. If amazon will deliver to your address, I’ll send you copies.

Hidden Figures is not math either.
Here is a woman who was doing math https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Mirzakhani

Hidden Figures is about women doing math under circumstances where their abilities and contributions were largely ignored.

As you continue to do now.

Very few individuals pursue mathematics at the same level as Mirzakhani. That doesn’t mean they are not doing math.

 

[Bronzeage]

Except for pissing for distance, can anyone name a physical or mental skill/trait/action, which every man can be expected to perform better than every woman.

 

[ronburgundy]

Yeah, but some people are demanding that we don't teach individuals, but rather that we make sure that we are teaching males and females at equal rates at every level of the subject, and that we don't hire individuals but rather make sure to hire equal numbers of males and females to perform the jobs which apply what was taught.

That is what underlies the aggressive push to increase females in the STEM fields, as though unequal representation in those fields is inherently a bad and unjust thing.

That's the OPs point. Is that a reasonable thing to expect, if there are differences in ability?

My 2 posts above try to take a nuanced stance that considers competing values and goals on the issue.

I don’t know anybody who thinks that we must hire equal numbers of male and female anything.

I don’t think that any thinking person believes that everybody should be taught math (or science or Literature or art or anything) at the same rate or st or to the same level.

The push to encourage more women in STEM is not to mandate some quota but to encourage males and females to pursue STEM education and careers (or whatever path) as their interests and talents lead them, and recognizing and removing barriers that discourage or event prevent such pursuits. An equal distribution among genders might or might not be reached but barriers should be removed.

I’m not trying to scare you but women are more than ready, willing and able to tackle all STEM fields.

Discussions of too few women in STEM regularly treat the unequal representation as itself a problem and as evidence of discrimination, which disregards that there may be ability and/or interest differences that are largely responsible. There is no rational reason to even cite the gender gaps in representation, if the concern is actual barriers to people who are capable. Because representation gaps are not any sort of evidence of barriers, unless you are dogmatically denying the possibility of differences in aptitude or interest. Thus, the pervasive discussion of the gender gaps in representation are clear evidence that many are treating unequal representation as itself a problem, and/or irrationality dismissing the possibility that unequal representation can be due to differences in aptitude or interest.

As for your passive aggressive insinuation that I'm some sort of misogynist who would be scared of competent women in STEM, I'm a proud husband of woman scientist who has done research related to teaching methods that could increase the retention of women in STEM fields. So, your pathetic Ad-hominem is factually wrong in addition to being a fallacious substitute for anything of intellectual substance in your post.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Are you really going to stick with that misogynistic statement?

I am a normal woman and I am interested in math. All the women I know are interested in math.

What is the representation of women CPAs?

CPA is not math. And how do you know you are normal? Autism in women is hard to diagnose.

WTF?

Fortunately, sexism in males is very easy to diagnose.

 

[ronburgundy]

Except for pissing for distance, can anyone name a physical or mental skill/trait/action, which every man can be expected to perform better than every woman.

Before we waste time with that, can you cite anything that anyone has said that implies or presumes that to be true?

In fact, if you cannot find anything in this thread, feel free to cite anything anyone on this board has ever said that implies that.

Hell, I am not sure that I have ever heard anything from even the most vile misogynists that presume that.

What is being assumed as at least a plausibility, is that there are some skills that one gender is better at on average, which simple means that the distributions do not completely overlap in contrast to the notion that the distributions have zero overlap, which is what your strawman presumes.

Also, note that even a somewhat small amount of non-overlap is likely to produce large differences in representation in positions where the highest level of that skill is selected for. That because, most of the non-overlap in normal distributions occurs at the extreme tails. So, if the people selected for doing X are all in the top 5% of skill Y, then even a 5% non-overlap in the distributions can lead to almost 100% of the people selected being from the group with slightly higher average on that skill.

 

[ronburgundy]

CPA is not math. And how do you know you are normal? Autism in women is hard to diagnose.

WTF?

Fortunately, sexism in males is very easy to diagnose.

Yeah, WTF barbos? Get off my side of the argument with that sh!t. And I say that as someone whom Toni just made an equally sexist fallacious personal attack against.

 

[Gun Nut]

For the longest time, the Airline industry was completely male-dominated. There was a chauvinistic expression... "If god wanted women to fly, he would have painted the sky pink"
As it turns out, it was found that women are actually better pilots than men, on average. Modern flying is less "stick and rudder" and more "cockpit resource management"... women make better cockpit managers. They are generally more risk adverse than men and they are generally more detail oriented. These are critical traits for a commercial transport pilot.
It is still a very male-dominated industry, but far, far less so.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Yeah, but some people are demanding that we don't teach individuals, but rather that we make sure that we are teaching males and females at equal rates at every level of the subject, and that we don't hire individuals but rather make sure to hire equal numbers of males and females to perform the jobs which apply what was taught.

That is what underlies the aggressive push to increase females in the STEM fields, as though unequal representation in those fields is inherently a bad and unjust thing.

That's the OPs point. Is that a reasonable thing to expect, if there are differences in ability?

My 2 posts above try to take a nuanced stance that considers competing values and goals on the issue.

I don’t know anybody who thinks that we must hire equal numbers of male and female anything.

I don’t think that any thinking person believes that everybody should be taught math (or science or Literature or art or anything) at the same rate or st or to the same level.

The push to encourage more women in STEM is not to mandate some quota but to encourage males and females to pursue STEM education and careers (or whatever path) as their interests and talents lead them, and recognizing and removing barriers that discourage or event prevent such pursuits. An equal distribution among genders might or might not be reached but barriers should be removed.

I’m not trying to scare you but women are more than ready, willing and able to tackle all STEM fields.

Discussions of too few women in STEM regularly treat the unequal representation as itself a problem and as evidence of discrimination, which disregards that there may be ability and/or interest differences that are largely responsible. There is no rational reason to even cite the gender gaps in representation, if the concern is actual barriers to people who are capable. Because representation gaps are not any sort of evidence of barriers, unless you are dogmatically denying the possibility of differences in aptitude or interest. Thus, the pervasive discussion of the gender gaps in representation are clear evidence that many are treating unequal representation as itself a problem, and/or irrationality dismissing the possibility that unequal representation can be due to differences in aptitude or interest.

The fact that you think the many studies that show that the gender gap is specifically due to sexism in the system, at the grade school, secondary, college, and professional level, because the 'difference in interest' has already been accounted for (there are many studies along these lines), may point to sexism. The fact that you aren't even willing to entertain that idea? Points to sexism.

As for your passive aggressive insinuation that I'm some sort of misogynist who would be scared of competent women in STEM, I'm a proud husband of woman scientist who has done research related to teaching methods that could increase the retention of women in STEM fields. So, your pathetic Ad-hominem is factually wrong in addition to being a fallacious substitute for anything of intellectual substance in your post.

You probably have black friends too.