Discrimination against women in science turns out to be a myth

lamdabar · 2011-02-09T22:25:57+00:00

I'm a woman who has always been in science and math. Let me just say that I do not see enough "discrimination" to justify much, if any, outside action to help women succeed (referring to beyond high school). What is needed are parents willing to encourage girls from a young age to go into non-stereotypical fields. My parents taught me that the difficulty in attaining a goal gives it value.

I know many don't share my view, but I think any obstacle that may be toppled by an individual's force of will does not require outside help. For example: when getting hands-on experience in a lab is offered to men (and subtly not to women), I will involve myself and make damn sure I get the experience. For most of my physics undergrad, there was a constant sense of "you shouldn't be here" and that I was other. It took years of over-proving myself and forcibly not allowing myself to be left behind on any opportunity for me to be accepted. This is OK. I expect men who are nurses go through something similar.

I think discrimination of women in science boils down to incentive. Humans are social creatures, and putting up with being an outsider for the sake of a brain-intensive career that you've been raised to believe is out of your depth is not exactly enticing. As such, I think any outside intervention for women advancing in science should be targeted to make science and math good, respected, obtainable goals.

tl:dr Parents need to raise girls with the same expectations as boys in regards to education and work ethic.

myssn · 2011-02-09T20:32:02+00:00

I wish the comments page of this article were filled with legitimate argument and/or commentary instead of "sweetheart" or "just not smart enough". It actually brings up a different kind of discrimination that wouldn't have been relevant in regards to this article, which I actually find pretty interesting yet obvious.

Bobsutan · 2011-02-09T21:24:16+00:00

It's because women choose the bullshit majors more often than men do.

imbecile · 2011-02-09T22:51:56+00:00

It's just another example of the wide spread behavior in women to blame men for their own choices. Just like it's husband's fault, if the woman cheats. Or the wage gap.

xiphoidhasani · 2011-02-09T21:18:42+00:00

Well it's all equal then, isn't it?

I found it kind of amusing that hiring, funding, and publication were the only "equal" areas--with the exception of hiring, how could they not be? Reviewers are generally blinded to author. I agree that I don't think that these aspects of academic life are biased (I am a female faculty member at a university).

The article goes on to point out that women "choose" to be underrepresented by making choices to accommodate family and other preferences. I bet that, if you make maternity leave in this country more humane (6 months would be nice, 6 weeks is crazy!) and subsidized quality daycare, more women might stick around through graduate degrees and postdocs. You can't blame those who invest in an education (medical school) that, in a finite period, gets them into a job with more options and benefits than those of a graduate student.

Just saying.

TL;DR It's the lack of progressive work/life policies, not men, that keep women down in academics.

ProbablyNotToday · 2011-02-10T21:27:20+00:00

THIS! THIS TIMES A FUCKING MILLION!

As a Computer Science student, there is only one type of sexism involved and that's against men. I always hear and read about how women are mistreated in science related fields and that's why there's so few of them so they need to fight the system. I've had people interrupt class and give speeches about joining IBM or other programs only to learn at the end of class that they were women only (so they basically wasted 37 out of 38 peoples time). And then reading reddit and other places about how women are discriminated against because they're women and guys don't find them capable, but I have yet to see any of this actually occur in my experience. And I don't limit this experience to just CS, I'm talking about all the engineering, physics, math, biology, chemistry and other science related courses I've had to take.

People don't hate women, they don't go out of their way and say "you're a dumb human being with different sex organs, so you just sit back while we work on the assignment and look pretty". Yes there's sexist people out there, yes they make stupid comments. But saying "all men are sexist in the science courses/departments" would be like saying "all women are bad drivers" because some teenage girl backed up into a tree.

People just seem to love their stereotypes when it justifies their ideas/beliefs.

InfinitelyThirsting · 2011-02-10T21:54:19+00:00

Transgendered people have disagreed, and have personal experience with seeing both sides.

rantgrrl · 2011-02-09T21:28:27+00:00

I saw this comment on that page and thought it was worth copying and pasting because it brought up an interesting point

Peter-Andrew:Nolan(c) February 9, 2011 at 11:16

This is exactly like “women are discriminated against as programmers in the IT world because there are so few of them”. This despite, in my 29 years in IT, I have only ever met one woman who can cut it with the men in writing code. And she was philipino……NOT western.

You will find that in IT women go for the ‘team leader’ or ‘project manager’ roles because the measure of success are FAR more vague than writing code. You code does what it is supposed to do or it doesn’t.

Indeed. In all areas where success and failure are black and white? Women are mostly absent. Just look at how many fortune 500 companies have been founded and run by women since womens lib started. That would be NONE.

Title	Discrimination against women in science turns out to be a myth
Author	wfprice
Upvotes	19
Comments	25
Date	February 9, 2011 6:31 PM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/fi62s/discrimination_against_women_in_science_turns_out/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/discrimination-against-women-in-science-turns-out.1043346 https://theredarchive.com/post/1043346

Comments