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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

> Why would you believe journalists over STEM people about workplace conditions in STEM?

Because STEM people are doing mostly STEM stuff. They are not actively investigating workplace conditions. So they only have a limited view of the entire space of "STEM workplace conditions". Journalists _are_ actively investigating workplace conditions and their findings should be treated with more seriousness than your friends or some person on HN.

> Journalists will write whatever sells the most clicks.

I agree the incentives aren't exactly well lined up to always promote ethical behavior in journalism, but its not as flippant as you portray. It is a serious profession and most journalists treat it as such.

> They're not some kind of scientists.

Agreed. But like I mention earlier, I trust their findings more than of my personal experience or that of people I may have first-hand experience with.

View on HN

Lets use what scientist writes and meta studies: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12062/gender-differences-at-crit... A copy of a comment on this article on key findings from page 153, various highlights:

- The findings on academic hiring suggest that many women fared well in the hiring process at Research I institutions, which contradicts some commonly held perceptions of research-intensive universities. If women applied for positions at RI institutions, they had a better chance of being interviewed and receiving offers than had male job candidates.

- The percentage of women who were interviewed for tenure-track or tenured positions was higher than the percentage of women who applied.

- For all disciplines the percentage of tenure-track women who received the first job offer was greater than the percentage in the interview pool.

- Female tenure-track and tenured faculty reported that they were more likely to have mentors than male faculty.

- Women were more likely than men to receive tenure when they came up for tenure review.

For tech, the ACM did a survey. It is one of the few (maybe only) that asked both women and men and came up with a lot of surprising findings:

"Our results suggest that men and women share some but not all motivations for entering IT. [..] men were significantly more likely than women to identify "love of technology/computers" as a key motivator. Women, on the other hand, more often indicated that "job security," "ease of entry," and "flexible work hours" were primary reasons for entering the profession. This pattern of results suggests that factors in the work itself are more important in the career decision making of male IT professionals, while factors around the job (such as flexible hours) are more important in the decision making of female IT professionals. "

"Men and women in our survey both generally reported a similar level of experience with role models. [..] This surprising finding does not support previous assumptions that the lack of females in IT means a lack of role models for women, which was assumed to be a disadvantage for women."

"Our findings uncovered only one significant gender difference across a variety of work-related experiences. [..] They differed in regard to their perceptions of supervisor support related to their careers. This finding indicates that women perceive greater support in meeting career goals, recognizing opportunities, and improving their job performance."

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...

If you've ever had inside knowledge about any stories that were reported on my journalists, you very likely noticed that they got a lot of key facts wrong.

The phenomenon where you then still keep believing every word written about other topics is known as "the Gell-Mann amnesia effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

As for the topic at hand, it's good to remember that "Gender situation in STEM is pretty good" is not a story. That never gets published. Not because of any political agenda, but because it's boring and non alarmist.

> ...I trust their findings more than of [sic] my personal experience...

Is this the current state of our education? This is straight up indoctrination. Does this thinking carry over to other areas? If you are not informed by your personal experiences how could one hope to be more than a shell for others thoughts and ideas?

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