Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

I'm not saying this to stir up some kind of controversy. But, I think it's wrong to silence him simply because we don't agree with him. He presented data, some efforts to support his view points. This is far better than fuelling hatred and bigotry just by providing opinions.

For instance, this person who wrote this article titled ("Why can't we hate men?") is actually a gender studies professor (now a director?) in a well known top university in Boston and still has their job:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men...

But we are offended and want to silence someone and fire them for providing atleast reasonable data to back his claims?

> Data show that, at the moment they’re hired in research or academic posts, female physicists have on average fewer (fractionally counted) papers and citations than their male equivalents. As the careers of physicists progress, the initial representation gap doesn’t change much, and a second difference known as the “productivity gap” appears. This was confirmed by my data.

I can confirm this does happen based on my limited observations. Some people get hired at the expense of candidates which are better by objective measures of publication, citation and funding records, and those people tend to be women and/or minority groups. And despite being an unfair practice, it is encouraged from top and employed.

If there is a sexism/racism problem, I don't understand how more sexism/racism would solve it. I don't understand how there can be a righteous and endorsed flavor of sexism/racism.

This is an example of where a topics based news aggregation and discussion would be better rather than article based aggregation and discussion. Instead of getting one side's story (one article), how great would it be if we had a "CERN gender topic" and a list of articles about that topic that encompasses all sides ( and possibly different regions ). Beyond one side or the another, wouldn't it be interesting to see what indians, chinese, south americans, africans, etc think of it too? I'm sure this topic is a lot more nuanced and complex than either side lets on and I feel these issues lend themselves to topic based aggregation and discussion. Just an opinion.

But whatever side you are on, I think the real issue here is the personal and professional attacks this academic got for providing an honest opinion ( backed by stats and sources ). The viciousness displayed by his fellow phycists and CERN as an organization is really disappointing as is their attempt to silence him. One of the basis of academia is the idea of "devil's advocacy". Where you or someone takes the other's side in order to getting a fuller understanding of any topic. How is any discussion possible when the opposing side is silenced?

Remember a week ago when this site scoured a public GitHub repo to ensure a woman physicist wasn't getting more credit than she was due? Imagine having to conduct yourself in your professional life as though you were under persistent threat of audit by some know-nothings if you stuck your head up too high. I would go insane.

Women are just as smart as men, i don't think anyone can debate this. Are women just as interested in the same things men are? This is highly debatable. There are biological differences between men and women.

> With colleagues, I spent the summer checking the data and exploring ways to present them at the workshop that wouldn’t harm our careers.

Is it just me or did this thread appear on the front page of HN and rising and then just disappear into nowhere?

I think the single most interesting result from this whole thing is that there is near equal representation of both men and women in the law profession.

I wonder why that is? What was counted as a person in a "Law profession"? Where support staff and secretaries included? If it was just lawyers, what are they doing right to get equal representation that everyone else does wrong?

Interesting article but it eludes me what his bibliographical research found other than gaps which where already known. I fail to notice where he differs from mainstream based on results his research found.

To be clear I don't like stifling discussion with non-scientific arguments either (which the author accuses CERN of). But imho the article fails to bring his arguments across other than "I was attacked on unscientific grounds". If he bases broader male variation on observations of citation indexes I think this is a poor measure as citation indexes favor the incumbents very much. A problem which also male newcomers have trouble with.

Why are women underrepresented in construction, police force, military, etc. Why are men underrepresented in day care, nursing, etc.

This is a glorious example of where the truth is hated simply because it’s inconvenient and utterly fails to support the sociopolitical narrative.

The reaction of the far-leftists to evidence like this is what has pushed me clear out of the left and into centrism. I will never become a conservative (that philosophy has even more patently bankrupt ideas it still desperately clings to), but I cannot consider myself “of the left” anymore. I simply cannot abide those levels of toxicity and religious-like ideology against which any dissent is heresy to be punished and crushed.

If he had acted with more tact, he could have avoided the outcry. His presentation was not at the right time nor place. Then going public (although he's not the only one at fault here) made things worst. You cannot do science in the public sphere. It speaks for itself that he was quickly embraced by anti-intellectual political factions.

why would he present the results in an academic conference anyway? Those are archaic gatherings with extreme social/political biases and nothing good ever came out of them (i ve been in quite a few). not a very smart academic

Why did this get flagged?