For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively
chronicle.com
chronicle.com
I imagine it'd have to get closer to 75% before people actually started worrying about men's graduation rates.
As to the gender gap in the hard sciences 52% of undergraduate Chemistry degrees go to women which arguably makes them under represented, but only relative to their overall dominance. Chemistry is often looked at as a gateway to Medicine so it's arguably a great choice for an undergraduate degree. However, I would argue getting a PHD in Astronomy or Physics is a poor economic choice which is one of the reasons why so few women do so.
PS: Any argument that women can't hack / are unprepared for the hard sciences falls apart based on chemistry numbers.
"I think it will take a bigger imbalance before people start worrying about a gender imbalance in favor of men."
Perhaps. But the majority of the gender imbalances negatively affect women. So let's look at that first.
See "Is there anything good about men?" http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
Wait, did you actually compare women to cave men or half monkey? Maybe that's why blacks aren't represented well in highly technical or high paying jobs, cause they only came down from the trees recently?</sarcasm>
OK I'll bite: The problem with your 'evolution theory' is that men and women aren't separate species and interbreed, a lot. Half the DNA in each women comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man comes from a woman. If "women DNA" were 'stupider' than "man DNA", then (like lots of genetic traits (e.g. skin colour, height)), you'd see it evening out over the generations. If there was a "dum dum gene" that only lived on the X or Y chromosome, you'd have to explain why it doesn't seem to affect people who don't have XX and XY (some men are XXY, some women are X, etc.)
The variance in aptitude in men is greater than the variance in women, even though the average point for women is higher than that of men.
To put this another way (vastly simplified), there are more male geniuses and more male idiots. However if you were to grab a random woman off the street, she is likely to have greater aptitude than a random man you grab off the street.
So in US highschools where grading is bounded and the same testing is forced on everyone, we see women routinely trouncing their male counter parts in GPA scores.
Then in college, where people have a choice more men go into difficult but unprofitable majors (e.g. Physics), additionally women have a bias against certain subjects (e.g. Computer Science) due to the low-status accorded to it, and thus choose other majors like Law or Medicine.
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Bringing it back to Genetics, that means the 'dum dum gene' (gene which causes aptitude variance) is on the Y chromosome, thus women aren't affected by it at all.
Yes there are several diseases that negatively affect intelligence that are much much more common in males (e.g. autism). However genetics (and evolution) is not fair. It's not a trade off, where if one subset of humanity (men) are more likely to have autism doesn't mean that Genetics will give that subset more genius genes "to make up". Evolution is blind, the universe is apathetic.
This "genetic disadvange in one area ergo must be genetic advantage in another" idea is only used to explain why people in a privileged position are "entitled" to their privileged position, and a deflection away from the main issue of privilege.
If the universe worked that way, then why are the IQ tests for (in the USA) lower on average for african americans? What genetic advantage do they get in return? If Asians are good at maths, what genetic disadvantages do they get to to counter act it? If Jews are better with money, what genetic disadvantages do they get in exchange? If this theory was true, it could have answers for these. If gay people are geneticly more inclined to mental health issues than straight people, what genetic advantages do they get in return?
In fact, you're actually taking my words to have the opposite meaning of what they were.
Example:
> if was genetics that explains how "men are smarter than women and hence that's why men earn more than women
What I said:
> we see women routinely trouncing their male counter parts
Lastly, trying to boil this down into a simplistic "women are smarter than men" or "men are smarter than women" argument is a fallacy in the making.
A difference in variance and mean does not mean one population body is 'better' than the other.
See: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago.
Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.
In a village of 1 man and 10 women, and that man impregnates each women, resulting in 10 babies. If you look at that set of 10 babies, then each baby will have half their DNA from a man and half from a woman. However of the 10 babies, the set of male ancestors is 1 person, but the set of female ancestors will be 10.
In fact it seems that even though more women get Bscs in math, actual cutting edge research in math continues to be made by 10% of women at best, roughly the same ratio as a generation ago.
Still not a single Fields medalist is female (despite the tremendous backstage games to change that) and that is not because of bias, very few (if any) women currently deserve it.
Men are more distributed in the extremes: both extremely bad and extremely good.
Just think of this: Why the number of people in prison is mostly males instead of half male and half female? Should we try to 'correct' this too?
This is not a problem of society, but a consequence of different reproductive strategies.
Thanks.
Male mating strategies exhibit far higher skew than female ones. Men have higher variance than women in every trait I know of, from heighth to IQ scores to income. Men take more risks.
Here's[0] where you'll find the most convenient counterarguments or pointers to same. Here's[1] the best book I've encountered on the general topic. The introductory chapter is excellent.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psych... [1]http://books.google.com.hk/books/about/The_Handbook_of_Evolu...
(The following line might have been feminist once: women have agency and are not puppets for men. When you see a group of women doing something, if your first thought is "What have men done to cause this?", Occam is not on your side.)
It's speaking to an audience of Educators at the University level.
Naturally, the context of their solutions will be one in which those Educators operate.
Why is this a mystery to the authors?
Referenced Quote from Article: "While bias, discrimination, and biological differences may have some secondary influence, they found, women simply prefer careers that don't involve math over careers in engineering, physics, mathematics, operations research, computer science, and chemistry. Why this is so remains unanswered."
Some Related Material: Podcast interview by Scott Hanselman on this same topic(http://www.hanselminutes.com/303/improving-diversity-in-tech...)
How are you determining the weight and timing of causative factors in order to make a nurture over nature proclamation like that?
I'm asking why the authors think that nature and nurture is not a sufficient explanation for the preferences of college age adults.
I brought up cultural bias specifically because it's something that people are used to trying to change, as opposed to genetics.
I can't say that I agree with all of it, but it's definitely worth reading to understand certain social and cultural dynamics.