UKH

If, like me, you have anything to do with hard science, maths, tech or engineering, you've likely been bombarded for the last decade with the message:  "There are fewer women in these fields; that's because these fields are biased against women and discriminate against them; this is your fault; you need to change and do better".    (NB: they certainly did in the past, decades ago, that's for sure.)

(If you suggest that, just maybe, any difference is sex ratio nowadays is more about things like a lower proportion of women being interested in such topics -- on average -- compared to men, then you are a heretic; suggesting this often does not go down well.)

But, the "bias" hypothesis, we're told, has hard evidence on its side.  And one of the prime pieces of evidence presented at diversity-training sessions is the study about blind auditions for orchestras.  Once orchestras auditioned musicians behind screens, the study said, the fraction of women accepted shot up, proving that bias had been keeping them out, and thus proving that bias against women for being women was and is real.  

I, like many people, had heard of this study on lots of occasions, and just presumed it was true. So, I had concluded, maybe the "fields are biased against women" claim does have a lot of truth in it.

It turns out that, no, the study does not say that.   From an article:

"According to Google, the study has received more than 1,500 citations in academic articles and thousands of media mentions. It has been featured in TED Talks, celebrated at the Davos conference, and showcased in so many diversity workshops that one attendee begged never to hear about it again. [...]

"The study’s appeal is clear: Two prominent economists, in a top journal, wielding state-of-the-art econometrics, captured and quantified bias against women and documented a solution. Or so it seemed.

"The research went uncriticized for nearly two decades. That changed recently, when a few scholars and data scientists went back and read the whole study. The first thing they noticed is that the raw tabulations showed women doing worse behind the screens".

Yes, that's right, blind auditions actually led to women's success rate declining.

"So where did Ms. Goldin and Ms. Rouse get their totemic conclusion that blind auditions dramatically improved the success of women candidates? After warning that their findings were not statistically significant, they declared them to be “economically significant.”"

Which, sort of, translates to: "OK, it's not true, but we want it to be true, so we'll go ahead and claim it's true anyhow".

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blind-spots-in-the-blind-audition-study-115715...   (Paywalled, but it seems WSJ allows reading one free article; try clearing cookies if you can't see it.)

And while we're on:

"Stereotype threat" (another favourite of diversity training) says that any invocation of the stereotype such as "girls can't do math" then causes girls to under-perform.  However, this does not seem to be true. People have tried to replicate the original study that claimed this, but failed to find any effect.   

"Imposter syndrome"  is the feeling that one is not good enough, compared to those around you, which can lead to someone not pushing themselves forward.  This one (another favourite of diversity training) was claimed as a major reason why girls have poorer representation in STEM at the higher levels.   And it's true, women do tend to suffer from imposter syndrome!  However, all the evidence is that males also suffer from it at similar rates. 

Lastly: "implicit bias" has turned into a mini industry. However, while millions of people (literally) have taken implicit-bias tests, there is no evidence that scores on such tests correlate with real-world decision making or with actual bias in hiring or in anything else.  (People have looked for such evidence but not found it.)

Whilst I agree with much of that, it doesn't mean that bias isn't present in some fields.

An example for which there is very good evidence is recruitment of nurses into the NHS.

I can't recall the exact figures but we looked at recruitment of nurses in one county over several years (perhaps 1000 appointments).  The proportion of male applicants was low (reflecting output from nursing courses), but they were about 40% less likely to be offered an interview and, if interviewed, 50% less likely to be offered a job.  So either men make poor nurses, or people recruiting believe, at some level, "nurses are women", or the recruiters recruit people like themselves...

I’ve spent a lot of time during my career in Engineering refusing to participate in ‘manels’ until they’re balanced, being appalled by attitudes I meet in both industry and academia. Having to make the case that female engineering profs are profs on merit, and can indeed be competent principal investigators on multi million pound engineering projects. This goes hand in hand with inherent racism and elitism.

i don’t really care what seems to come out from raking over the bones of studies, it’s all too close for comfort in everyday life.

Out of interest, does "balanced" mean 50:50, or does it mean in-line with the overall ratio in engineering?

I know little about engineering (or industry for that matter), but in the fields I'm familiar with in academia I don't recall ever encountering any such attitudes. 

Good for you Paul

For those who believe gender bias in STEM is a problem, here are some resources which include posible actions to help improve things and that celebrate women in STEM .

https://www.womeninstem.co.uk

https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk

https://www.aauw.org/research/why-so-few/

Plus a fun paper showing male perception in STEM to papers on gender bias may be part of the problem.

http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/quality-evidence-revealing-subtle-gender-biases-...

I work in engineering and have never been aware of bias. While it is true to say that even in my current industry, microelectronics, there are much fewer female job applicants than males.

I've also had several female bosses one of whom is now a very senior manager in Apple.

I work in aerospace engineering and in the UK our engineering workforce is predominantly male. Many of the support functions are nearer parity.

In our European operations the engineering functions are much nearer parity. This is just an observation and not about Europe.

A truly level playing field is needed.

Between 1962 and 1964, 40 percent of the chemistry PhD's awarded in Soviet Russia went to women. At that same time in the United States, that number was a measly five percent. 

In 2006, that number was still lower than the Soviets' from the '60s—just 35 percent, 

That’s because all the men were dead.

Fair enough but where do you think the imbalance comes from? Discrimination on the part of an employer or simply a lack of female applicants? I'd say the latter. 

Thinking about the French parts of my company I'm not sure the ratio of male to female is much different in the straight engineering roles. However I sense there are a lot more women engineers in the wafer fab I work with but these women are material scientists and chemists as opposed to electronic or mechanical engineers.

I hope you are trolling because that is clearly nonsense. 

I agree, but the lack of female applicants is a historic legacy in the U.K. It will take a generation or two to remove that demographic bias IF we put in place the educational levers to help.

We must read the same alt-right misogynist news sources as I saw this one pop up yesterday too.  Made interesting reading.

Interestingly enough there does look to have been an imbalance.

https://knoema.com/atlas/Russian-Federation/topics/Demographics/Population/...

Possibly this was ww2 related or maybe from famine due to Stalinist policies. The actual ratio may also not be as big an impact as cultural changes during the time (more opportunity/demand for women to enter industry).

Regarding the op - I've no idea. I've been in both engineering and IT fields and have never had a female colleague. I've always assumed a culture bias exists but don't really have anything to back it up. 

Isn’t it time you started living in the present.

Lol, nicely played.

It really isn’t. Look up “World War II” and “gulag” and see what you find. 
 

this isn’t to deny that the Soviet Union did in many ways have a much more egalitarian attitude towards women in terms of encouraging and enabling them to participate in the hard sciences (though they remained highly excluded from higher ranking positions across academia just as in eg politics). But this was partly born of necessity: the casualty rates incurred by the Soviets meant they just had to let women in during the pre- and immediate post-war eras if they were to have any chance of modernising practically overnight from a backwards feudal peasant state to a leading industrial power. 

Pefa won’t let any MAN tell her what to look up!  

Cool story, 1964 you say?

In 2017 Putin downgraded legal sanctions for perpetrators of domestic violence against women. Human rights watch note that 12000 Russian women die annually as a result of domestic abuse, that's 37 times the US rate.

Still, look at all those PhDs in 1964!

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/09/putins-war-on-women/

I'm not really getting much from that link except males have increased more year on year. 

Now obviously around 8 million more males were killed than females in WW2 in the USSR by German fascists but we are talking not about adult males dying but toddlers during the war reaching PhD level by 1962 to 1964 so how is the war relevant to that? Were Nazis killing only male toddlers? No.

If Stalin had not introduced collectivisation then the Nazis would have won WW2. Yes it was done too quickly but he didn't have control of the weather destroying the 1932 harvest or Britain forcing the USSR to pay in grain from 1932 and blockading USSR gold from purchasing grain Internationally.

Lol nice try but no cigar. You cannot handle the fact that the USSR was far more equal to women than the capitalist west and that still stands today. In fact women had the vote in the USSR before the so called democratic UK. 

HRW are full of anti- Russian BS so nothing they say is fact but yes you are right on the domestic abuse laws(though wtf that has to do with STEM in the USSR you must only know) in Russia highlighted recently by the two sisters who killed their abusive father. It must be changed but when was it changed here? Not that many years ago eh? 

Are you seriously an apologist for Stalin?

Facts only. 

She's the AEI Fellow who did the Feminist War on Boys book isn't she? So yeah, that figures.

Calm down, petal 

Hi Coel, 50:50 wherever possible

Absolutely right here. Back when I used to teach undergrads, I used to deliver a core first year module to around 150 students out of which females would be around 10% at best. Interesting that the proportion of females started to rise when we opened up a direct entry from a Malaysian college into our second year.

We delivered Masters modules/CPD to Rolls-Royce, GE etc, I don’t remember a single female coming through that. I founded an Engineering School in partnership with Siemens, which again was predominantly male entry. The key is outreach and constant work with schools to redress the balance, but it takes a lot of resources and commitment.

I’ve more recently moved over to research in health and bio-engineering, in a Faculty of Health which is predominantly female. Only my experience, but I’ve found it to be the most collegial and supportive environment I’ve ever worked in. 

If you tell somebody their sucess is partly due to privilege they are not very receptive.

Who the hell cares? Jeez.

Wow, Russian women got the vote in 1917!

Which parties were they allowed to vote for then?

Chapeau. 

As you say, some STEM fields such as health and veterninary science are skewed the other way, and are female dominated.   Do you also see that as a problem? Should we also aim for 50:50 in such fields, doing outreach into schools to encourage boys to apply, etc?

I would not necessarily see it as a problem.  If, as seems likely, those sex ratios result mainly from male and female interests tending to be different, such that STEM-interested women tend to be more attracted to "human" subjects such as health, whereas STEM-interested boys tend to go for the more abstract and nerdy topics such as coding computers and maths, then is it a problem if the ratios are 30:70 or 70:30, rather than 50:50?

Surely what matters is that any young person is enabled and encouraged to pursue the avenue that most attracts them.  And if that then leads to ratios that are not 50:50 then ok. 

She indeed is!   Christina Hoff Sommers seems to me a voice well worth listening to, partly as a corrective to the advocacy of other feminists and on the basis of listening to different sides of an argument.  Thomas Sowell is another for a similar reason.    In particular, they have a proper emphasis on the underlying facts of the matter that is, sadly, not so present elsewhere. 

Quite.

I sense the consensus is that the issue of male dominance in some professions (and female in others of course) is not due to discrimination by employers but some divergence of paths during school years.

It would be interesting to look at children who come from families who have a parent as an engineer. In those families are daughters more likely to enter the engineering profession than those from the general population. The same would be true of other professions, social work for example, as well.

Sommers is an interesting character with some interesting connections...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Christina_Hoff_Sommers

Rational Wiki is site controlled by far-woke loons who are far more interested in ideology than truth.  That piece (like much on RationalWiki) is essentially a hit-piece by those who don't like the fact that Hoff Sommers calls attention to facts. 

Maybe you should look a little closer... instead of simply dismissing what you don't like because of your increasingly alt-right-ish biases. Why don't you consider the evidence here properly instead?

What actual evidence do you want me to consider?

And is "alt right" now a term encompassing everyone who is not a far-woke loon? 

I'm surprised you accuse Coel if showing alt right bias in this thread.

Could you point out where he has done so?

I quite like the idea of being a far-woke loon.

Except that I don't think it means anything.

Just don't let it go to your head, and keep the focus on whether a claim is actually true, and you'll be fine!  

If you want to use terms like 'far-woke loon' I reserve the right to use the term 'alt-right'. As for evidence, there are plenty of quotes and sources in that article. 

His use of the term 'far-woke loons' was the only element in this thread but I wasn't specifically referring to this thread.  

My 23 year old daughter is a software developer.As we all know the number of women in that area is seriously low.She works for a great employer.

In London she goes every now and then to a networrking group called something like women in computing and the networking events are open to all.

She phoned last week to say there was a bit of drama in a Q and A session after  a presentation when some guy stood up and basically said women were not good enough and they should go back to being domestic servants as their place was at home bringing up children. Needless to say there was a bit of commotion over this.

Unfortunately real world experience for women in STEM subjects suggests that this attitude is still prevelant from neanderthal men who look for excuses.

Her own expereince of sexism suggest that it is in education that it is more widespread ranging from young male students to lecturers.Interestingly she does not come across it in the commerical sector where it is more performance driven and blind to these issues.

OK, quote here some  actual evidence from that article.  There is no substance to it. It's just innuendo, smears by association, and opinion; it's a hit piece, and doesn't even pretend not to be.    Just compare the tone of that article with the equivalent from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Hoff_Sommers ).

What exactly has Hoff Sommers said or written that damns her? Please be specific.

Leaving aside your, err, particular, views, on bias, there are very good practical reasons for having engineers broadly reflect society - you get better engineering.  If all engineers were say 3ft 80 year olds, to take an extreme possibility, you would get design inherently better suited for 3tf 80 year olds than society in general.  In reality, with most engineers being men, much engineering design is oriented towards men over women, with similar biases for other characteristics.  This occurs despite best intentions and willingness to design for society broadly simply because we are all biased to having a better understanding of world from your own perspective, and will therefore design accordingly.    This alone is a good reason to make strenuous efforts to address the gender imbalance in engineering, even if you believe it would be fighting some inherent preferences between genders.

Hmmm, some rather unpleasant innuendo Bob.

I've don't know and don't really care what "far woke" means but the article you linked to is obviously partisan to the point where I wouldn't use it to form an opinion on the subject.

Here's one of the pieces cited in the article:

https://fair.org/extra/the-stolen-feminism-hoax/

I know that the RationalWiki article is snarky and partial, and I know that it indulges in more than a little messenger-shooting. But there is evidence in there, if you can be bothered to follow it up. 

Presumably then, this was a very unusual incident?

Never in my professional career have I heard this kind of thing but something occurs to me. What was the background of the sexist? Was he of another culture, Islamic or Indian for example?

The question then is should one aim for 50:50, or should one not care too much so long as the fraction of women does not fall below some level, where that level would be, hmm, maybe 30 percent-ish? 

No one seems to be having this argument about floristry. 

I’ve heard that studies pretty much prove that  man and women think differently. This is bourne out in my everyday experiences. Women are different. Not least because their hormone mix changes on a weekly basis. The studies show that after puberty men and women start to think differently. 
 

The jury is out as to whether this is nature (huge testosterone increase in boys) or nurture (we automatically treat boys and girls differently) but this was something that the researchers question. The differences are there non the less. 
 

Whether this is good or bad depends on your position but it needs to be taken into account when you look at what choices men and women are making after puberty and what professions they’re more suited for. In particular there’s no reason why Women should be held out of STEM subjects, in fact because they look at things differently they should be actively encouraged to take them up. But we shouldn’t be looking at all professions in the same way and we should be making more informed allowances. 

White English.

I think perhaps you should have discussions about their personal experiences with female colleagues if you do not think this type of attitude is not present  in STEM subjects.You might have your eyes opened a bit.

I guess if Coel hadn't used the term 'far-woke loons' I might have been more temperate. That's by way of an apology: sorry Coel. 

See my last post... follow the links. It's partial but there is substantive content there. RationalWiki certainly has a left-of-centre stance, but it's not all extreme. It's a wiki - there are a range of positions reflected there. There's an 'About' piece here:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki

And here is Hoff Sommer's reply to that piece: https://web.archive.org/web/20010305082419/http://www.debunker.com/texts/fa...  

(Note that the Wikipedia page links to the rebuttal, whereas the Rationalwiki page does not.   Note also that the Rationalwiki cites this piece as "You hear constantly of C.H. using up trumped-up and seemingly lazy statistics to support her point of view. Sommers was exposed for this practice as early as 1994 ..." -- as though the claim is an established fact, and not an assertion about which there are counter-arguments.

Yes, I can be bothered to follow up evidence. But it's better to start from something that at least attempts to be neutral (such as the Wikipedia article) and not a site that flaunts its biases as a badge of honour. 

For those in favor of 50:50 representation, what are your thoughts on the gender-equality paradox (sometimes called the Scandinavia paradox) whereby the countries doing the most radical steps in the name of "equality" have the fewest women going into stem subjects?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/03/14/investigating-the-stem-gender-equality...

Here's a sentence from the article you're pointing to:

"Almost all of her argument reeks of boilerplate conservative bullshit (including the arrogant video title "The REAL Reason There Aren't More Female Scientists"), ranging from the insinuation that women choose certain STEM disciplines less because of biological differences ..."

Is the phrasing "reeks of boilerplate conservative bullshit" even an attempt at a fair assessment?   It's not a sensible way of reacting to quote reasonable claims. 

The suggestion is that young boys have a tendency to play with tractor toys and guns, and that young girls have a tendency to play with dolls.  (Obviously there is a huge range here, and that doesn't apply to everyone, but there certainly is that tendency.)  And that this difference is not just social conditioning, but reflects, to an extent, underlying biology.  And that this tendency might carry-through into choices later in life (such that you get a 70:30 female/male ratio in veterinary science and a 30:70 ratio in coding computers).

That's a fair argument; there is lots of evidence in favour of it. I'm not aware of any refutation of that claim.   It's hardly outlandish.

And so for someone to respond to that suggestion by saying it "reeks of boilerplate conservative bullshit" is saying that they don't want an argument on the evidence, but just want to declare the answer on ideological grounds and then flaunt their virtue by denouncing anyone who disagrees.  It is that attitude that I label "far-woke loonery".

I do not think anybody is advocating 50:50 representation. More the fact that women are not discouraged by the actions/views of men and treated with either open or hidden hostility as not worthy.

I am not sure if I would like to be a women student of Coel!No doubt he will tell a different story.

In reply to:

We will never have the following;

50% "midpersons" (not midwives of course) male, 50% miners at the pit face female, 50% foundry steelworkers female, 50% "binpersons" female, 50% frontline infantry female.

Why ? - For the first one the "customers" would never stand for it, for the rest, women don't want to do the jobs.

Why is it that women only want equal representation in the well paid nice jobs, but never the filthy/dangerous/physical ones ?

That's a secondary point perhaps worth exploring when we approach 30%!

And those that do want to do that job I am sure you would welcome with open arms.

From your post it would seem to imply that you would be hostile to anybody in those options who did not fit your narrow view.

I deal with 2 women who work in foundries.

Heaven forbid your type of attitude.

Yes, and one obvious difference is that the majority of men are sexually attracted to women whereas the majority of women are not, they're instead sexually attracted to men.   (Just thought I'd state the obvious, since such things can get overlooked!)

The studies also show that pre-puberty boys and girls think and act differently -- on average -- as is clearly apparent if you simply watch them play.  

I don't think that the jury is still out here.  The evidence is clear that a large chunk of the difference is indeed natural (= from hormones and thence from genes).  (For example, does anyone really think that the large and real systematic difference is sexual attraction is purely a social construction?)  Of course there will *also* be some differences that *are* from socialisation.

Why not?

In my field we are pretty much at 30%.  And so it is now a live issue: do we push for 50:50, looking for and "rooting out" ever more hidden sources of bias (as many of those pushing "diversity" implicitly assume), or do we accept that 30:70 is pretty much the natural level?

His post does not imply that at all.  All his post implies is that there really are real differences -- ON AVERAGE -- in choices made by men versus choices made by women.  Why is that so controversial? 

Aim for parity; make no assumptions about self-selection by gender or gender suitability.

This should be the aim in primary school staff as well as oil rig operatives.

That's from the RationalWiki article, not the one I pointed to, which is much less rhetorical - 

https://fair.org/extra/the-stolen-feminism-hoax/

This also links to a later exchange between the FAIR author and Hoffman, where they were happy to publish her reply.

I would be interested to know how underlying biology leads to a tendency to play with toy tractors and guns. What would be the causal mechanism? 

As above... Also, you have to distinguish between one writer on RationalWiki's rhetoric and the overall website, which you dismiss simply because you object to one article. 

It didn’t seem that cut and dried for the children. Brain scans showed no difference, so the behaviour could be genetic, but it wasn’t due specifically to the way the brain functions. 

The causal mechanism is that the developing brains of young boys are flooded with male sex hormones whereas the developing brains of young girls are flooded with female sex hormones.   Of course the details or how that affects people's brains is complex and poorly understood.

I've read several other RationalWiki articles.  About 10 or so years ago it was a sensible, fairly neutral site from a "rationalist/skeptical" point of view, and an authoritative source that I would happily have linked to.    Over time it got captured by a cluster of "woke" editors.  After a while the more middle-of-the-road editors abandoned it as a lost cause.  That has left the woke editors with free rein to produce the highly partisan articles that typify it today. 

Brain scans are hugely, hugely crude.     They mean very little here.  The "information" in the brain is in the neural network of dendrites and synapses.  Brain scans don't tell you anything about that level of detail, they only tell you which bits of the brain are active.  

Such scans are similar to little flashing lights that tell you your computers CPU is active or that a hard disk is being accessed -- that tells you next to nothing about the "ideas" that are being processed.

 I am not sure your soft skills come across very well. 

I don't know why you are so averse to removing blatant sources of bias - there is nothing hidden about them.   I have done quite a bit of work with school children around engineering.  Many teachers, parents and other role models are woefully informed about what it involves, with many assuming it is only metal-bashing and oily rags  - I don't exaggerate..  Given this, it is hardly  surprising given society's wider views and physical differences many girls don't choose engineering.  Present engineering as problem-solving and making society work, and all of a sudden the level on interest changes.  Pretending this is all down to innate differences (of what??) is arrant nonsense.

I agree about making no assumptions about self-selection by sex.  But nor would I "aim for" parity (which, it seems to me, *is* making an assumption about self-selection by sex, namely that it's the same for both boys and girls).

Instead I'd aim for (quoting from above): "... that any young person is enabled and encouraged to pursue the avenue that most attracts them", and not care that much about the outcome ratio. 

If a particular girl would indeed be happier with a career as a vet, would you really want to, instead, try to steer her towards coding the next Microsoft product, just so would be nearer the parity that you are aiming for?  Why would you want to do that?

I'm not. 

Yes, I'd agree with you there.  To many people an "engineer" is someone who fixes a washing machine that breaks down. 

Well good, in which case why don't we indeed focus on removing these biases and lack of understanding rather than searching for at best marginal differences in aptitude between sexes

So here you are making the sexist assumption that girls need soft skills from an instructor whereas boys don't?

They tell you about the structure and the routes that the information is taking, the areas that are connecting. 
 

They showed the way adult brains process information is different between men and women and again different to children. 

Another side of that question is that you can't just demand 50:50 in the attractive well-paid professions.  Achieving that parity, especially if by quotas, would potentially deny men access to work in equal numbers.

More females than males have been graduating from university for the better part of two-decades now, yet little is made of that inequality and its likely impact on work-force participation.

So male hormones lead to playing with tractors? How does that work? How do hormones directly influence choice of cultural artefacts like toys that weren't in existence for most of human evolution?

What's your evidence for all this? Anyway, they are very happy to allow criticism:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Common_criticisms_of_RationalWiki

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Why_RationalWiki_is_not_so_great

- and they don't hide their biases or their snarky tone:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:What_is_a_RationalWiki_article%3...

I should not have to be telling a lecturer about the benefits the benefits of soft skills.

Meanwhile  

https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/qatar-foundation/women-breaking-through-th...

First, no-one has talked about difference in aptitude between the sexes.  The thread has indeed focused on differences in what interests the different sexes, and I don't think those differences are marginal. 

As for schools, and how they encourage both boys and girls, yes, I'm all for it.  If I haven't talked much about it that's partly because I don't teach in schools and am not that aware of how they treat these matters.  I would hope that they are indeed equally encouraging and supporting of both girls and boys to pursue STEM topics. 

There will always be some.  Just like there are women in the workplace, especially tech, who will happily stand up and decry white males.  This is acceptable however, while similar statements against females are not.

From what I have seen of tech, in terms of workplace policies and employment and training incentives, women are consciously advantaged.   

Might part of the problem be that if women or minorities are constantly being told that they are, and will be, discriminated against (as the Opera-Screen experiement "proved") then they will be hyper-sensitive to any hint of that or tend to associate negative events to that bias.  The rest of us don't have that option - even if we were actively biased against.

As I said, the details of how the brain develops are hugely complex and poorly understood.

They influence more general attitudes, that are then manifest in particulars such as "tractors". 

Try giving a mixed class of young children some tractors and some dolls to play with, and see who ends up playing with which.

There is little different - people will tend to be interested in things they are good at.

I'd suggest you become more aware.  It is painfully obvious why many children make decisions about subjects to study if you spend time in schools or with parents, and it isn't to do with inherent interest or ability.

I'd add that a senior academic holding forth in public about how physics etc. isn't interesting to girls may itself have an effect on decisions that girls make.  Rile models are known to be a key factor in career and subject choices.  Hearing that they won't find it very interesting from someone like you will put girls off.

As long as that mis-characterisation is being communicated to boys and girls equally it wouldn't account for any differing level of interest among the genders, would it? Unless boys inherently like metal-bashing and oily rags more than girls, of course.. 

I did see a rather pointed post on Twitter recently saying something along the lines of, men have toiled for hundreds of years in filthy, loud, harsh, dangerous, and life-shortening employment to provide for their families.  Only now, that the work-environment (or rewards) of that toil have improved to such an extent that it is more tolerable, does there appear to be an interest in equal access to it.

That doesn't deny what has clearly been systemic opposition to female participation in some areas of work.  But it is interesting how the equal representation argument only applies to some areas.

They also don't tell you the full picture at all.

The example has been used on here before: I could take a male and female body, point out to you that they are identical, given they both have two eyes, two legs, two arms, hair, cells, hearts, spleens and so on.  Yet 99% of the time, someone looking at them from a distance can judge from the subtle differences in musclular-skeletal dimensions that one can produce children and one cannot.

Dramatic differences can be contained within subtle differences.

Will it? Any hard evidence for that? 

Anyhow, I've not said that girls will not find physics interesting.  I've said that the fraction of girls who find physics interesting is likely different from the fraction of boys that find physics interesting.  That is really a very different statement, that says next to nothing about whether a particular individual will find physics interesting.

Yes there is lots around career and subject choice and the effect of role models 

That not what will be heard by those making choices. 

My understanding is that early hormonal differences lead to small differences which are then  magnified by socialisation and cultural influences. Like a kind of cumulative error...

But the differences are there. Saying those differences make no difference is a bit odd. 
 

They’re going to make a difference in specific situations. Understanding why they make a difference, in what situations they make a difference and why those differences are or aren’t relevant and/or important in each specific situation is key. 

While I agree that socialisation and cultural influences have an effect, what is the evidence that the hormonal differences are only "small"?

But no one honestly claims brain scans entirely, or even mostly, explain human thought processes and preferences.  The advent of fMRI obviously brings a new area of science with it, but its still a bloody crude method for judging human thought.

Things like this: Berenbaum, who's one of the experts in this area:

"Don't rule out the impact of socialization on gender though, cautioned Berenbaum. "What happens to most people is that we start out with small biological differences which send us off on different environmental trajectories. Socialization then magnifies the differences until they become bigger over time." 

https://phys.org/news/2005-06-gender-differences-predetermined.html

You'll find her work very interesting in the light of this current debate. Here's a more detailed publication:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4681519/

Agreed, it is interesting. 

Here is a quote from it:

"Activity interests and participation – from childhood toy preferences to adult hobbies and occupations – continue to be strongly linked to prenatal androgen exposure"

And here's another one:

"Furthermore, sex differences in occupational choices (e.g., male-predominance in science and engineering, female-predominance in social service) appear to be driven in part by androgen effects on interest in things versus people ..."

That is exactly the claim that, when Christina Hoff Sommers made it, the above RationalWiki page said it: "reeks of boilerplate conservative bullshit".

Aren't you saying then that boys like metal bashing and girls don't? I'd broadly agree with that, on average and it would explain the small number of female engineers.

Really? I think for pretty much all history up until the 20th century, most women were very much part of the workforce. 

Do you think that the difference between men and women is greater than the difference between cultures? 

Far Eastern nationals generally perform far better at maths than any other cultural groups. This is true in their home nations and in the west. This out performance is nearly all at the lower end. They do not have better high end students, but the low end students are streets ahead, and the gender gap is far smaller. In general, The primary reason given for this is that these countries have a mentality that everyone can do maths if you try hard, whereas western countries believe maths is innate, hence the widespread ‘I can’t do maths’ mentality. 

I know you were largely talking in terms of interest rather than aptitude but the two are clearly related. 

Would it be worthwhile turning this exclusively [?] male discussion on its head.

If we think of the female dominated professions, the caring professions for example. As males can anyone remember being discouraged from entering them in any way or being encouraged to prioritise male dominated disciplines at the expense of female dominated ones?

Not exactly... they actually moderate what they say about biological differences; leaving the main 'bullish*t as being the illogical claim about discrimination - 

"ranging from the insinuation that women choose certain STEM disciplines less because of biological differences (this at least is something Steven Pinker espouses, though not to the same degree) to the assumption that, because certain STEM fields have a large representation in women, other STEM fields that aren't cannot possibly discriminate against women." 

You are of course making assumptions that women are told this. 

What I find amazing about all these posts is that nobody says we should be actively encouraging more women to be involved as clearly there are benefits. 

I find it quite negative depressing in this day and age. No wonder women are still in the minority.  

Father of 2 daughters doing stem subjects.

I will always be grateful to my Dad who was serious textile engineer who taught me that women engineers are usually better than men as they have had to fight their way through male prejudice. Most posts on here reconfirm that view. 

I’d you scan men and women doing the same tasks and all the women’s brains light up one way and all the men’s brains light up a different way, then I’d say that’s extremely strong evidence that their brains are working differently. 

I don't think anyone is against actively encouraging women to be involved.  At all.

What I have an issue with is the automatic assumption (and seizing on individual and rare examples as evidence) that any difference in gender ratios is a result of discrimination.  That's actually a big, and unfair, accusation to make tarnishing a hell of a lot of people with negative motivations that they probably don't have.  

I see the opposite, to the point that I became discouraged away from a career change into tech because I saw the degree to which females were being targetted for employment.  I felt that, on a course that was 50/50 male/female my chances of employment were substantially diminished due to me being a male.  This policy is openly celebrated.

There's something wrong with implying an entire gender in a sector is acting in a discriminatory manner when despite all their efforts to acheive a 50/50 balance it simply isn't possible.  Because the genders might just gravitate naturally towards different roles.  Evidence from egalitarian countries has shown this tendency to be even greater so all the efforts, bordering on discrimination themselves, might be entirely counter productive.

Trouble is, the "illogical claim about discrimination" is a lie -- she has not actually said that, and they produce no quote of her saying that.

There's an interesting article, reflections from a male within a female-dominated profession, here:

"I’m a Male Teacher Surrounded by Women. But Please Don’t Call Me a Victim of Sexism"  https://quillette.com/2018/09/30/im-a-male-teacher-surrounded-by-women-but-...

On this issue -- differences between different cultural/racial groups -- I don't know.  We don't really know whether the differences are cultural or genetic, since the factors are too entangled and no studies have been done that can tell us.   I think we're only guessing as to causes here.

You do know there is a shortage of people doing stem in all areas. As regards women in tech doing say computer science the  Umbers are shockingly low  in my daughters year there were 5 out of 105  . 2 dropped out before graduating  

So all this rubbish about women being favoured misses the point. you need more women to make up the shortfall anyway.

That was this bit... the assumption that, because certain STEM fields have a large representation in women, other STEM fields that aren't cannot possibly discriminate against women." 

She says it in the video they reference... why is there so much discrimination in maths, engineering etc when there are so many women in biology etc. etc.. It's not so much illogical as irrelevant. The video is full of rhetoric... it's a polemic, not a piece of objective reasoning. What some people might call bulls*t...

youtube.com/watch?v=l-6usiN4uoA&

Are we watching the same video?  OK, yes, it is advocacy and uses rhetoric (techniques to persuade). The video format seems to favour that.  But it makes many fair points and is not a "polemic" nor "bulls*t".   And, in tone, it is vastly more sensible and evidence-based (and free from slurs and insults) than the RationalWiki page about her. 

Exactly. She asks the question.  Your own paraphrase says that she asks why there would be rampant discrimination against women in some STEM fields but others.  (The answer that they don't discriminate because there are more women in them is not an adequate answer, since they used not to have more women in them, and yet have moved to being that way now.)  

So what does RationalWiki "paraphrase" her as saying? They "paraphrase" her as saying: "because certain STEM fields have a large representation in women, other STEM fields that aren't cannot possibly discriminate against women".  They are lying, she does not say that.   She makes no "cannot possibly discriminate" claim.   She asks questions about it as one part of her argument. 

Seeing as we're having such fun with RationalWiki, I thought I'd drop in what they say about Quillette:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette

But it is dishonest how the equal representation argument only applies to some areas.

FTFY

Yes but has anyone done this? Source?

That's misleading.  In STEM, like just about any sector that claims shortages, there are shortfalls of experienced and skilled employees.  That still leaves tough competition amongst the newly qualified to get a foot on the rung.   

If few women want long hours sat in front of a screen coding, that doesn't mean they are being discriminated against.

And the point about favouring is not "rubbish".  It is stated openly.  In my current role we are being threatened with funding reductions, and therefore pumping substantial sums of our own into diversity programmes, if we don't meet quotas.  We are bending over backwards and doing everything short of breaking the law to get people who aren't male, aren't white, or aren't from good schools in.  

Food for thought.  Perhaps your perception of sexism and discrimination in the workplace is decades out of date?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gatn5ameRr8&feature=youtu.be&t=47m5...

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equalit...

https://quillette.com/2018/06/19/why-women-dont-code/

Sigh, I think I'll leave you and Coel to finish off your biscuit game in peace.

And no I don't want to know who won.

Another thread about gender with no participation from female members of this forum.

I wonder why.

Are we watching the same video? It's a polemic. For example, 'it's politically radioactive to deny that everyone is good at everything and no-one is better than anyone else' is only there for controversial effect. 

This thread is tremendously sad. 

As a male in STEM I am not judged based on my gender; I am not spoken down to, I am not questioned about my appearance, my colleagues do not insult my intelligence. These things happen to women in STEM on a daily basis.

So I suggest for those doubting the existence of gender bias in STEM, that  you ask your female peers about their experiences of gender bias. I imagine you will be quite shocked about what they have to say, if you can lay aside your beliefs briefly to hear what they say with some impartiality.

The fact that you cannot understand the very real existence of a gender bias suggests that you are implicit in these activities. We are all guilty of subconscious sexism (and racism, ageism etc) but by asking female peers about their experiences you might learn to recognise your sexist behaviour, and alter it accordingly. 

Do they? Your basis for this claim is ...?  Is it all fields of STEM or just some?

Are we?  Evidence for this?

This is the "everyone is guilty"  line beloved of the woke.  It's a bit like the religious "everyone is a sinner", and just as with a religion, the beliefs matter more than the evidence for them.

Because there's sod all female on UKC?

What exactly is it that drives you to flounce off?  Males aren't allowed to talk about issues that concern themselves as much as females (accusations of bias, employment quotas, gender-specific workplace policies, bad science)?

You dont seem to make any distinction of STEM fields in the OP, why should I? You do not suggest that the OP is in reference to only some of STEM do you?

Yes, if you can muster some self reflection you will see it. People make snap judgements of other people, based on what they see. What do they see? Gender, age etc

It's not like it at all. If you ask your female colleagues you will have some evidence, admittedly anecdotal, but better than the supposed evidence that you have failed to produce. I'd be glad to read your evidence if you can produce it. 

I suggest you have a serious word with your HR department, perhaps capture these daily events in some way, and go public.  It sounds like you spend your time in an atrocious workplace of the likes I have never seen anywhere I've worked in 20+ years.  Doing nothing about it (other than telling everyone else they are biased) means you are complicit.

Perhaps you could provide some evidence of the kinds of sexist behaviours I may be complicit in, or blind to.  Then I'd have some idea of the kinds of things I'm not seeing.

Hopefully its more than being a straight white male, or having a viewpoint/disagreeing on issues.

A female member of UKC offered her input near the top of the thread, and was told to "calm down, petal"

Do you not get it??

Ah yes... "This is the "everyone is guilty"  line beloved of the woke. "

There are women who post on UKC, quite a few actually.

I haven't flounced off although I do enjoy a good flounce.

Just to be far woke whatsit or whatever the hell Coel said you need to 'check your privilege' before you drone on about "accusations of bias, employment quotas, gender-specific workplace policies, bad science" from a male perspective.

Stop grumbling into your beard unless you have a genuine grievance.

You made a claim about the experience of women in STEM. I simply asked whether this was in all areas of STEM.

My OP is actually mostly about one specific study. 

Well I don't think it's true.   Of course there are plenty of areas that I don't have direct experience of, so it may be true in some areas.

If I ask female colleagues I get a whole range of responses.  Believe it or not, women do not all think in lock-step and all say the same thing.  There are plenty that, like me, are rather sceptical of a lot of the "diversity" ideology.  

Evidence of what?   What claim do you think I'm making?  You are the one who made a lot of claims in your previous post, and haven't supported them.

As Pefa is our resident communist, a single person calling her "petal" is hardly the end of the world. 

I'm called a racist or a cvnt often enough on here, for what I presume are less offensive ideas than downplaying Stalin.

The woke don't seem to like it when the same requirements they throw at others are applied to themselves.

How do you know this? 

Anyway, this obsession with 'the woke' has become something of an alt-right thing - is that how you want to be seen?

Telling anyone to 'check your privilege' does qualify as pretty woke (and ignorant of what real privilege is probably).  

I work in an environment that is overwhelmingly female.  I am routinely the only male in the meetings that fill my day and, if I'm not, more often than not the only straight male.  I'm surrounded by what I would class as a female environment.  Woe to me?  No, because it's not discrimination.  Its just an environment that clearly suits females.

I also sit in on a lot of interview panels.  I've never once heard people mention that, due to a lack of representation, it would be good to get more males on the panel, or select more male employees.  But when I recruit for the areas of our organisation where the balance is reversed, it is a constant refrain.

That's no grievance.  My grievance is with the morons who think this is all in one direction and who willingly make (or buy into) the bad science that backs up those opinions.

I'd rather not.  But you're going to play fast and loose with the alt-right accusation anyway, plus having regularly been called a racist on here, I'm hardly going to lose sleep over it.

Is there another term we're allowed to use to describe a political persuasion where Hoff-Sommers or Quillette are challenged not on account of their arguments but on account of what some junk website has to say? 

That citing an article pointing out flagrantly bad science, that has predictably been taken us as a TRUTH by the 'woke', means you are alt-right?

Here's another guy that bangs on about the woke.  You probably reckon Sam Harris is alt-right too.  Perhaps try listening to the last 10 minutes of this podcast from 1:51:00 - https://samharris.org/podcasts/172-among-deplorables/  You might just get a hint of why this, and incorrect accusations of discrimination and bias, matter.

It wasn't an accusation - it was a question. Spot the difference. As for the rest, it's your usual tactics of distraction and half-truths. 

As for Sam Harris, I don't think he's alt-right. I don't think much of many of his ideas - surprise!

Good, I'm an old fart trying to be progressive so I'll take woke as a compliment. Tell me what real privilege is, I don't know what you mean.

Can you say what your profession is? It could give some perspective. As I stated upthread, i'm an aerospace engineer.

Again hard to comment without knowing what your job is.

I can't make any sense of this. What direction, what bad science?

Have you actually spoken to employers. ? Clearly from your post the answer is no. There are shortages at all levels. 

Glad you are being targeted this way , it is quite clear you need to be. 

Glad to see somebody else suggesting to Coel  that it would be useful for him to speak to women colleagues.

What is it he has said that makes you feel he should be targeted in this way? is there anything that is wrong or misleading? 

The Scandinavia paradox highlights that this is a complicated issue, and that the raw statistics can't be reduced to being down to discrimination. Is it not a fair point that we should look at the bigger picture? Why do you think fewer women go into STEM in Scandinavian countries that do so much to try and minimise gender differences compared to countries that have only just allowed women to drive?

My problem with basing things on anecdotes is that it only reflects that one person's experience, and hence without speaking to everyone you don't actually have a picture of anything. I totally agree that cases of discrimination should be appropriately tackled and people should limit their bias. My perspective is working at an engineering consultancy. There are quite a lot of women working here, and I do talk to them about these sorts of things. If you want to split up the groups of people who work here, you'd probably come to decide that there is much more a lack of individuals from poor and working class backgrounds. 

Did you not get the deliberate tongue-in-cheek irony of the "calm down, petal" comment? I believe that the female member of UKC in question, got it, and I like to think she was a little bit amused by it. 

Also, my comment was not in response to her overall input, but to her statement to another poster "you can't handle the facts", which was part of an out-of-control rant that frankly needed to be calmed down. 

At the same time, I will apologise for using a misogynistic term ("petal") in jest. 

Here's my contribution, for what it's worth. I'll state only facts and offer no opinion or theory. 
I worked for 12 years in a small research/engineering/manufacturing firm (around 15-20 staff).
In that time, we had only one female member of staff on the technical team, and she only stayed for 2 years. Subsequently through recruitment drives, we only ever had one female applicant for a technical role, she was offered the job as she was by far the best of the candidates, but she turned it down. 

This sounds very like one of the scenarios in the D&I training I took recently, although that then rather spoiled the nuances by making it clear the team was a caricature of neanderthal sexism (which I'm sure yours wasn't).  Why do you think you had such trouble recruiting and retaining women?  

You're assuming I haven't?

How many females, having graduated from university, have then married fairly soon - to someone they met at university - and have then settled down to have children and be a housewife, particularly when the person they have married comes from a well-off background.

I live right next to a fee-paying school, and the number of young mothers who drop their children off and then leave their cars while they go into town, plus the number who arrive (far too) early in the afternoon to collect their offspring indicates that an awfully large number of apparently well educated females (who have married a well-off husband) seem to have no paid employment, and probably will never do so. The males who deliver/collect children are in and out in seconds, with an obvious need to get somewhere (work ?) in the morning, and are amongst the "late" collectors in the evening.

It is socially acceptable for a female to bring up children, whilst hubby goes out to bring home the money. It is not socially acceptable for the reverse to be the case. This is NOT my view, but it is the majority view.

Not a lot in STEM directly, but certainly in tech, aviation and in my own sector.  Being involved in HE however, I am well aware of the complaints from graduates about shortages of job opportunities.  

Its a shame someone, who considers themselves progressive, thinks that on account of doing nothing more than wanting accuracy in a one-sided discrimination narrative that I should have my employment options limited. 

It's a sad day when the supposedly progressive side of the argument becomes the discriminatory one, actively seeking to exclude people from employment based on their opinions, sex, orientation.  That is "wokeness".

As the article in the OP makes clear, there are MAJOR problems with the gender-bias, implicit-bias and discrimination dogmas.  Questioning them is not denying discrimination exists.  But you need to pick the right targets rather than making blanket claims of guilt. 

You still do not get it.I suggest you talk alot more to female colleagues/students to understand the issue of discreminition in STEM subjects and how men react to women engineers etc.

I have seen it with my own eyes with my daughter and the way men react to her on technical issues in computing. Its utter disbelief that a woman knows more than them and can solve an issue.

When you get that then you understand.

I take it you do not have daughters who are doing STEM subjects.

Agreed.  This is also visible in the spate of articles doing the rounds at the moment decrying lowering marriage rates due to a shortage of "good" men. 

"Good" in this context isn't relative to character but in relation to lack of home-ownership, lack of a decent job or income prospects. 

The expectation on the part of many women still seems to be that their husband should be capable of earning more and have status.  We all wish that wasn't the case, and can cry and scream that it's not true because of a few isolated counter-points, but there's no denying the position of bin-men in the mating hierarchy. 

It's completely understandable from a biological point of view where, by necessity (and reflected in the post-natal choices and priorities) mothers take on a primary role in childcare with fathers providing income.  This then has a knock-on in relative experience levels for similar ages in the workplace, and with that promotion prospects and gender-balance at senior levels.  This is in fact exactly where the wage-gap kicks in.

Progressives of course say this, and the resulting lack of role-models at higher levels that then may lead to less women wanting to join the workforce, is all evidence of discrimination.  But perhaps its just a logical outcome of life choices and biology.

I have mostly female colleagues.  It's hard not to talk to them.  My sector more broadly, despite the gender ration in my particular area, is seen as an old boys network (if you go with the news reports).  From working through Athena SWAN applications I've had the opportunity to see where that comes from. 

Yet my colleagues have mixed views.  There are a small minority who appear to see discrimination in every negative interaction they have (unsurprising since that's exactly what they've been told to expect).  That extends beyond just gender issues.  Most however seem to experience nothing of the sort and benefit from flexible working arrangements and shorter hours than male colleagues. 

So you've seen the way people interact with your daughter?  Or you are basing this on your own experience with people of a certain age-group?  And your experience describes the sector at large?

Have you any daughters?

This may be true in some areas of engineering -- I don't claim to know, since I've never been part of engineering -- but there are many areas of STEM where it is not true.   In the last 30 years in an academic physics environment I have never once witnessed anything remotely akin to "utter disbelief that a woman knows more than them and can solve an issue".

"Many" and "seems". Have you got any research to back that up or is that your personal experience?

No, I've never had any experience of this either. Never witnessed it, never heard of it, never heard any of my male colleagues talking about women in a way that would make me suspect they harboured sexist views and never heard a female colleague complaining of it. OK, my experience is of course limited but so is Neil's but if his daughter I experiencing discrimination then I'm pretty sure she could find a better place to work.

Ah, you got me there.  I have no daughters.

So, of course, I cannot comment on the state of discrimination in STEM.  

With a bit of Googling I could no doubt find anything I want.  But no, I'm not sure what the science is agreed on.  Given the OP, what would I trust?

Do you not get the impression that the endless list of these (https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/08/broke-men-are-making-it-hard-for-women-to-ma...) sort of articles doing the rounds point in that direction?  And wasn't this pretty evident empirically and with this (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917302143) sort of evidence. 

I have two. I also have a sister ( mid 50's) who has an HND in mechanical engineering.And a niece( daughter of another sister) who is a time served plumber and gas engineer.

Its interesting talking to all 4, and opens your eyes a bit about how male colleagues react to women in studying or working in STEM subjects. My sister who did the HND vocationally in the early 80's clearly had a far worse time( even though she was top of her year at college).

My 25 year old niece has interesting tales.

Your assumption is that it was at her work.As I said earlier her employers are excellent ( beause there is a shortage, so employers tend to treat all people well and come down hard on anybody who is out of line and not upto their expectations).

You might not see it as you could just be blind to it. But your female colleagues might open your eyes a bit if you talked to them about how they view things.

TBH its having daughters and listening to other women in my family involved in STEM which really opened my eyes. Probably because they are more open with you and make you aware of these issues.

Anyway, other things to do this pm. So will leave you and Pan to chew it over.

Or maybe it just doesn't happen much in the sort of university department that I work in (which seems to be rather different from the environment of your female relatives).

Proceeds with the description of an experiment in a totally unrelated field.

Solid hard science, there. Well done.

Again, priming may have a lot to do with it.  I get it that attitudes a few decades back were different.  But if we attach our expectations to what was the case back then, then its no surprise that if you ask people now about the state of a sector then they will respond with negatives.  The same thought process has come up in the Extinction Rebellion discussions.

I could equally give my perceptions on how I have fared in the UK job market being an immigrant or being a male and I've periodically played the thought experiment of "how would this look to me if I was black/female etc".  Its striking how quickly you can externalise a negative event.

Jess Butcher gave an anecdote, (I think here: https://player.fm/series/triggernometry/jess-butcher-on-women-in-tech-socia...) about how she was telling someone about how bad women have it in tech.  The person kept asking her back about what actually had happened to her, yet she kept responding back with the same answers.  It took her a while to realise that she herself was just repeating the anecdotes of others, and that actually her own experiences weren't as she believed them.  

You are more likely to win people over if you don't keep using the terminology - often deemed to be rather condescending - "open your eyes" and variations thereof. 

I think you're missing the point.  The article was pointing out that the study, claiming to find evidence of implicit bias and discrimination, didn't not.  It was bunk.  As this kind of study then gets used to describe discriminatory behaviour in general, might there be something to take from that?

It's the people who promote diversity ideology in STEM, and who organise "diversity training" in STEM who consider that that orchestral blind-audition study is relevant to STEM.

No it isn't used  by "the people" It's possibly used by some.I've certainly never come across the example. Pretending that because one example is flawed there is no problem is weak, to say the least. 

Further, pretending treating people fairly and giving them a full opportunity to make informed choices is an "ideology" is absurd. 

Did anyone do that?

Did anyone do that? 

My reference to "ideology" was to the "blank slate" claim that men and women are pretty much identical, and thus that if women make up less than 50% of a field then it can only be due to bias and discrimination, a claim that is then combined with a refusal to consider any other explanation (and a "burn the heretic" attitude to anyone who suggests them).    This ideology is quite prevalent among the sort of people who promote, design and conduct "diversity training". 

It's interesting that you perceive that there is an endless number of articles like that, I honestly don't see that, but it's clear that we all live in our own echo chambers in many ways. For what it's worth, when I have heard about ideas such as "mating hierarchies" applied to men struggling to find girlfriends or wives, it is generally been in reporting about the incel movement. 

I have read that in China and India the lack of women due to policy decisions, or indecisions in the case of earlier Indian government failure to sufficiently restrict sex selection, the marriage value (for want of a better term) of women is going up. 

I note that the metro article is reporting the press release from American research. I've no idea whether the situation here would be similar or not. 

Do you think that the think tank that Hoff Sommers works for and that she choose to publish her article in the WSJ Opinion pages is not indicative of a certain ideology also? Perhaps that's similar to the ideology that you're attracted to or indeed hold.

If that ideology is "judging the issue on the actual facts" then, yes!  Many left-er-leaning think tanks or papers would avoid giving her attention because she questions their ideology. It's not so much that she "chooses" to publish in the WSJ, as that the WSJ chooses to publish her.

Again, if the ideology you refer to is "judging the issue on the actual facts" then guilty M'lud.

But how do you know what facts AEI and WSJ Opinion pages (a very different entity from the main journalism of the Wall Street Journal) aren't alerting you to?

I'm sure you're well aware of AEI's history of funding and solicitation of work from scientists who are sceptical of climate change or the seriousness of climate change.

By reading other things in addition? 

Yes. they are a pretty big organisation with a couple of hundred people operating in a range of fields.   Attitudes by some of them don't necessarily tar all.    I wouldn't necessarily trust something put out "by the AEI", but I do think that some of the people that work for them (Hoff Sommers and Ayaan Hirsi Ali for example) are important voices. 

Have you not done your implicit bias training?  I've just worked through my annual session of it on Moodle in September and the orchestra study was one of the examples given.  It was the go-to study for as long as I've been aware of this stuff, routinely cited.

It looks a lot like "ideology" if it claims to be about fairness but is actually about something quite different.  Even more so if questioning it results in cries of heresy.  

I'm pretty sure our news sources have become self-selecting.  It's a problem.  I've probably seen 3 or 4, decrying the poor market-for-men women have to deal with, this month.

Re: Chine, I thought this was intriguing "In China, with 122 men for every 100 women, women have more economic bargaining power when it comes to marriage..." - https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1168212671021408256

For fear of derailing (an already derailed) thread, the question of male/female ratios in China raises an interesting point about the liberal value we assign to abortion rights.  If we are 100% onboard with the "my body, my choice" argument, how do we feel about sex-selective abortions in places like China?  

It is going to take generations of time to change the M:F ratios in certain areas because of the sheer weight of gender-specific material & influence out there. From birth children see the majority of nurses being female and the majority of mechanics being male etc. Their story books, nursery rhymes and toys reflect that. Unless they're wrapped in a bubble away from external influence it's incredibly hard to change those gender sterotypes in their heads.  Is that stereotypical influence bad? I don't think so, there are no barriers to a girl doing a boy's job and vice versa anymore.  Should we be artificially forcing the change in ratio? Only if a more balanced ratio would improve things.  There's a lot of discussion about the lack of male primary school teachers due to the whole paedophile thing being detrimental to children's upbringing for example.

I was just talking about this with a friend of mine, who did her physics PhD about 30 years ago. She said there were several senior men in the department who point blank refused to accept that women could do physics at all, and said they should be home in the kitchen. Hopefully things have improved a bit since then.

Hmm I haven't read the link (can't get past the paywall) but I had read elsewhere that it found that with screen women did better in the primaries but gained no further advantage in later auditions. As such there was no statistical advantage. The Economic advantage comment was pure nonsense.

It didn't prove that women were being discriminared against but neither did it prove they were less capable (given the inherent emotional interpretation of a musical piece and that one would assume that people going for an audition would at least have some skill to begin with).

It has been suggested that the success of women in orchestras reflects changing attitudes rather than screens.

Indeed, and I think societal bias has a far greater part to play in the problem than employer or colleague bias; girls learn that 'engineering isn't something girls do'.

In my '82 year intake for electronic engineering, there were 90 of us. Just 4 of those were women.

My employer is heavily involved in outreach programmes in primary and secondary schools, trying to encourage anyone to take an interest in engineering, but we do try a bit harder to encourage the girls, understanding that we have that wider societal bias to overcome. For an engineering company, we employ a pretty high ratio of women (especially so in my division). I'm pretty sure there's a bit of positive discrimination going on, too, which I'm not in favour of; positively discriminating to one group of people is negatively discriminating to another.

I went to a meeting recently with a colleague, and she happened to be carrying a big box of 'blue sky thinking materials'; pens, post-its, etc. One of the (all male) group of hosts quipped 'oh, are you here to take notes...?' Which didn't go down very well... I tried to reassure her afterwards that it was just a stupid attempt at humour, given all the writing materials she was carrying. I hope that really was the case.

But is it really that hard?  Yes: "From birth children see the majority of nurses being female ...", and the majority of doctors male.  And 30 years ago being a doctor was indeed hugely dominated my men.  

Nowadays, in UK medical schools, the ratio of those training to be a doctor is 55:45 in favour of women.  Which means that things can actually change pretty quickly, despite the story books children are given.  Stereotypes may not be as pernicious as people think.  

Edit: After Googling: "in this age group, [under 30] 61 per cent of doctors are now women and 39 per cent men."        

And yet, I'm going to bet that if you ask 6-yr-olds to draw a doctor, most (both boys and girls) would draw a man.  So yes, they have a stereotype.  Does it then affect the outcome much? Well, maybe not.