Gender Bias

Long after former Harvard University president Larry Summers tracked the subject, a debate continues in academia over whether women avoid the sciences out of choice or necessity.

According to the authors of the 2006 report of the National Academy of Sciences, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering,” there is an exclusion of many talented women from the scientific fields of physics, engineering, computer and mathematics. It also states that this is a direct “threat to our nation’s competitiveness.” This report concludes that women are victims of “a widespread bias in Science and Engineering” and the authors urge universities and policymakers to “tackle the science and mathematics gap” as soon as possible. The authors suggest that “only sweeping changes in the culture and structure of academic science could lead to a larger representation of women in the scientific fields, and to do this there should be workshops to educate federal and academic personnel about unconscious bias and how to combat it.”

There are others, however, who do not agree with the findings of the 2006 report of the National Academy of Sciences. Critics of this report argue that “it endorses gender bias as the primary reason for the scarcity of women in the hard sciences without adequately considering alternative explanations.”

stressed that there have been strong limitations to the education of women throughout history. Ms. Barnett, who is also executive director of the community, families, and work program at the university, gave several reasons for this bias. Women have always been encouraged and empowered to stay in the household.

Once a bunch of us from work were in a restaurant, and a guy who was my superior at work gestured at the gorgeous waitress and made a nice, PC remark, "Nobody ever gave her a chance to be an engineer."
I replied, "Dick, I'll teach her calculus myself - but first you have to convince her that she won't be attractive to a man unless she learns calculus."

Starting in the first line, this article is dishonest. The research is rock solid over numerous studies that there is an unusual thread in IQ studies. No one knows why this is so, but men are both smarter and dumber than women. Specifically, there are more men proportionally in BOTH the top 2% of IQ distribution, and the bottom 2%.

That top 2% is defined as geniuses. (Genii, if you want to be correct in Latin.) So, when one looks at the Harvard faculty, for instance, there will be a smaller pool of women available in all disciplines. There will also be smaller pool of women who are morons, and against the evidence I suggest that Harvard does not seek to hire female morons on its faculty.

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I'll teach her calculus myself - but first you have to convince her that she won't be attractive to a man unless she learns calculus.

Like BEING a male engineer is a turn-on in any social situation short of a meeting of Trekkies.

. . . but, to cast it in negative terms, not having professional status and income certainly is not a turn-on in social situations. Engineering is abstract thought applied to practical problems. Maybe you went into engineering without reference to the fact that there were job openings for people with that training, but . . .

As an aside, I'm very interested in a recent book,

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I find it an interesting book requiring close reading; I'm starting to reread it and I think I will give a copy to my son-in-law. The burden of the author's song is that people are naturally focused on what they know rather than on what will turn out to be important. In effect, that we are systematically arrogant (he doesn't use the word) in thinking that the future is predictable.
He emphasizes that although the normal distribution "bell curve" has importance it is stunningly common for people to use it where it grossly underestimates the impact of the improbable. Makes the point that anyone who thinks about his own life will identify highly improbable things which had an impact on him. Indeed, that we are surrounded with things that would have seemed stunningly improbable to most people not long before they became accepted facts - and everyone retroactively constructs a narrative explaining to himself why it was "inevitable," even though prospectively it was the last thing people expected.
He made his fortune when the stock market tumbled in 1987 and has had what he calls FU money ever since. And he made it because he had been focused on the tendency of others to underestimate risk. He says we systematically underestimate opportunity as well. In practical investment terms, he translates that into investing 85% in hyperconservative things like Federal Bonds, and the other 15% basically speculating - looking for small, intelligent bets on long shots. What he says he avoids is "low risk" investments which are actually riskier than they look. And that relates to our original topic, since choosing a career path is essentially the biggest investment decision you face in life. And you make that decision when you are a snot-nosed kid.
His work is philosophically related to Chaos Theory, and he is a friend of Benoit Mandelbrot.

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