Posted on 06/15/2010 6:48:37 AM PDT by neverdem
If the Senate passes legislation establishing regular “workshops to enhance gender equity” in academic science, what exactly would scientists and engineers do at them? The legislation, already approved by the House, is a little vague beyond directing researchers and heads of academic departments to participate in “activities that increase the awareness of the existence of gender bias.”
But let me venture one prediction: There will be lots of talk about the male chauvinists on the Swedish Medical Research Council who awarded 20 postdoctoral fellowships in 1994.
The analysis of those fellowships, published in Nature in 1997, is the fundamental text of the gender-bias movement, cited over and over at conferences, in papers and in lobbying materials. If you’re looking for evidence of discrimination against female scientists, this article seems to be the one clear, unambiguously scandalous finding.
The article was written by Christine Wenneras and Agnes Wold, two of the unsuccessful applicants for those Swedish postdoctoral fellowships. After learning that male applicants were much more likely than female applicants to succeed, they sued to get the data behind the decisions and then analyzed the 114 applicants’ publication records. They concluded that a woman had to be two and a half times as productive as a man to receive the same rating of competence...
--snip--
They find consistent evidence for biological differences in math aptitude, particularly in males’ advantage in spatial ability and in their disproportionate presence at the extreme ends of the distribution curve on math tests (the topic of last week’s column). But given all the progress made in math by girls, who now take more math and science classes than boys and get better grades, Dr. Ceci and Dr. Williams say that differences in aptitude are not the primary cause of the gender gap in academic science...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What about the Gender Gap in Nobel Peace Prize winners?
What’s our Prezzydent say about that?
The fact is, some women—like my daughter—don’t want to be scientists or mathematicians. They just don’t. But those who do want to should not face barriers any different than those that men must confront.
The NYTs staffed by Blank Slate fundamentalists.
Stop the Madness!
I remember my mother complaining about what she called the “do-nothing” congress back in 60’s. I have no idea what she was complaining about.
They could meet in a bar, get smashed, and try to grope the waitresses. Oh, look, I said "waitresses"! Gender Bias!
There are more women in college, more women in law school, as many women as men in med school.In the NY Metro area only three schools have a male majority, Manhattan College, Yeshiva, and West Point.Girls, 40 years ago often went to college to get the Mrs. degree. Now they find themselves unable to meet guys with equal education. I don’t see Congress talking about that gender gap.
There's nothing that will get someone recognized in scientific (as opposed to academic) circles than actually knowing something about science.
Excuse the Old School engineer who went astray and tried his hand as an instructor at a local college for a few years, but I have observed during that experience that practically anyone of any gender (or state of confusion in that topic) attending high school or college classes in math or science can get any grade they wish, because most of the subjects taught are only marginally related to either subject, unless you count Socialist Dialectic as a Science.
Hypatia, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Grace Hopper, yeah, women don’t have any role models in science and engineering. And there’s already a Society of Women Engineers that encourages girls to pursue that career path.
As long as any woman has the equal opportunity to pursue fields of interest, this should not be an issue at all.
Remember when Larry Summers was forced out at Harvard for saying that we could explore why there is a gender gap in the science fields?
I think studies have been done in some other fields, in which women haven’t risen to the highest levels in the same numbers as men in recent years. And some of those studies have shown that women who have children and family responsibilities often fall out of the fast track to the top. Is that the fault of society discriminating, or is that a woman’s life choice to put her family ahead of a demanding career? Are these situations anyone’s fault; do we really have to find someone or some reason to blame for alleged lack of equality?
There we go, that's better! Much more accurate now. Being a graduate student in English, I can tell you first hand that women outnumber men in humanities graduate studies, yet there's no hue or cry about how men are so underrepresented in the humanities. Likewise, the only thing they want to bring attention to is that women are underrepresented in the math and science arenas. There's no gender bias. As other FReepers have pointed out, many women just don't want to go into math or science.
I'll start worrying about more women in tenured high level academic positions when I start seeing more women on oil rigs, in mine shafts, and on trash trucks.
Women have never wanted equality, they want equality for powerful positions but I've never seen ANY woman fighting for their right to work on an oil rig, as a logger, or as a garbage MAN.
If there is a glass ceiling then there sure as hell is a glass cellar too.
These women complain about bias, well what about the bias that over 90% of workplace deaths are men, workplace accidents are all men, the majority of homeless people are MEN.
Feminism is a crock...
All we need to do is reassign some of the former "males" as "females" and everything is hunky-dory.
Years ago I worked with a man who had been an airline baggage handler. He said that all the handlers were expected to work equally. Needless to say, the women handlers would not lift bags weighing 100 pounds and the men had to lift them.
There was another assignment that had a risk to it. When the plane came in, a worker had to hook up a device which drained the toilet. Once in a while, there was a malfunction and the worker got soaked in blue waste. When that happened, the worker would be automatically granted the rest of the day off. But the women flatly refused to do that task, so management wouldn't force the issue.
Which is my point....when I see feminists marching on Waste Management for equal reperesentation in the workforce, I may start considering that this is about “equality”.
>>>There are more women in college, more women in law school, as many women as men in med school.In the NY Metro area only three schools have a male majority, Manhattan College, Yeshiva, and West Point.Girls, 40 years ago often went to college to get the Mrs. degree. Now they find themselves unable to meet guys with equal education. I don’t see Congress talking about that gender gap.<<<
True, true, true. I even see this up here in my little Bush Alaska high school. Twenty years ago, the valedictorian or salutatorian at graduation had a good chance of being a boy. For the past five years, they’ve all been girls.
In our little section of the world, we have one of the nation’s highest rates of single parent families. It’s a disaster for Native culture and Native communities, and the students themselves bring up the subject often.
The reason: Daniel Patrick Moynihan nailed it a long time ago when he wrote about the breakdown of the black family. The primary failure of the welfare state is the destruction of men in the family, replacing male energy and efforts with the government. The boys I teach are demoralized. They know that their energy and efforts are now useless. Girls, on the other hand, know that they have kids to look after, so they pay attention to their education.
I’ve been saying that boys are suffering since the middle 1990s - nice to see that society is finally catching up with the obvious.
I try what I can do to point out that (in class, no less) that welfare will run out someday, perhaps soon, and then people will either have to work hard or perish. I go out of my way to make sure that readings reflect strong and courageous men. I work hard with boys who have intelligence and drive but have given up hope. Sometimes it is not enough, which breaks my heart.
Then there’s the personal touch, which I can get away with up here near the tundra. I have told my students if my son (now 12 years old) gets a girl pregnant, he’ll be forced to marry her for the good of the child. Not surprisingly, the students are favorably disposed to this - especially the girls. It’s also meaningful that many, many students gravitate towards the happily married couples on staff and beg to be invited over (again, something we can do in small-town Alaska) just to see what it is like.
In that sense, I’ll be glad when our economy finally implodes. It’ll be a crisis for a while, then it will be an opportunity to reclaim hard work and focused effort.
Dennis Miller sums it up best when he says, “I’m all for helping the helpless, but I’m a little burned out helping the clueless.”
I for one, prefer a mother to a successful woman engineer or scientist.
This to me is feminism’s continued degradation of womanhood.
The legislation, already approved by the House, is a little vague beyond directing researchers and heads of academic departments to participate in "activities that increase the awareness of the existence of gender bias."The best way to do that would be to read the legislation aloud, since its very existence is testimony to the existence of gender bias among advocates of the legislation. Thanks neverdem.
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