Gender quota in science

[MiamiDAP]

Population dynamics mght have a role in gender representation for future researchers in China and India. However, these cultures do NOT "discourage females from pursuing education" at all.

[jessiehl]

...there was an easily observable difference between the way the female students at BU, for example, dressed for classes, and the way [Wellesley students] did. As you might expect, they dressed up and wore makeup, we didn't.

Fascinating. For a lot of us MIT women, this was our perception of *Wellesley*. Maybe the fashions have changed.

I've also found that the majority of girls interested in science are premeds. Would the draw of a medical degree (higher pay, more intereaction with people) be pulling top female science students away from research too?

Perhaps (though there's no reason that the draw of higher pay should disproportionately affect women, that I can immediately think of). Or perhaps girls who are interested in science are steered, without the steerers even necessarily thinking about it, toward medicine.

I mentioned this thread topic to some of my friends (male and female, nearly all in sci/eng), and it started some interesting discussion. A computer scientist said that in his field (being in the same field, I would tend to agree), most of the men are unconsciously sexist but convinced that they're too smart to be, and that the women are discouraged further because abrasiveness is encouraged in the field, and women in our society are socialized not to tolerate abrasiveness. An astronomer said that her field is full of old white men, with few female or minority role models. An acquaintance who runs an engineering summer camp, regularly gets calls from parents worried that their daughters can't do the soldering projects because "they're girls and aren't inclined toward that sort of thing." A friend who is an electrical engineer just left her job in part because of sexual harassment. The same friend had a high school teacher tell her that over his dead body (his words) would a girl be captain of the physics team. A friend who went on to be a math major was told in high school that since she was a girl, there was no reason for her to take more math classes. Some girls are still told by parents or grandparents that if they show up the boys in math and science, they won't be able to get a man.

The societal pressure is still there.

[pafather]

I apologize in advance for the long post. If you don’t want to read it, in a nutshell it is my opinion that a few anecdotes regarding bias against girls do not prove gender discrimination and certainly do not explain the small percentages of females in some fields. Self-selection accounts for a lot of the differences. Title IX, since it is statistically-based, cannot be defended against and forces schools to use inappropriate quotas.

Many boys work at soccer for hours on end. Certainly, in any measurable way, elite boys are substantially more “athletic” than elite girls (e.g. 10 percent faster, 20 percent stronger; check all Olympic world records). However, boys and girls have similar hand-eye coordination (e.g. similar free throw percentages in basketball) in performing tasks in which strength and speed do not play a significant role. Therefore, if they worked with the same intensity for the same duration at the same tasks that do not demand speed and strength, they should have comparable outcomes. However, many young men spontaneously, without being forced, work on athletics longer than girls. Certainly, SOME girls work hard, but nowhere as many as boys. There is no physiological reason a boy should be able to juggle a soccer ball (i.e. kick it, head it, etc. to keep it in the air without using the hands and without it hitting the ground) more times than a girl. Nevertheless, on any good boys’ club soccer team, essentially all of the boys will be able to juggle a soccer ball many hundreds of times. On a comparably successful girls' team, perhaps a few players have skills this advanced. In my opinion, this is one type of proof that elite girls do not work as hard at sports as elite boys do. This obviously does not prove that NO girls work as hard as boys or even that most boys work harder than most girls. It only proves that among elite soccer players, the average boy spend many more hours kicking around a soccer ball than does the average girl. Title IX demands equal number of “opportunities” for girls in sports, even though elite girls do not work as hard as elite boys do. As a matter of fact, in Division 1 soccer, girls’ teams are allowed to provide 20 percent more scholarships than are boys’ teams. Assuming gender discrimination just because the outcomes are different (effectively how Title IX is administered) is bad analysis and in my opinion “unfair” (if you want to reward equal desire and hard work with equal opportunities).

Similarly, consider the type of person who, for no immediate benefit besides wanting to solve a challenging problem or develop something “cool”, spends thousands of hours developing computer code. Sure, some of these types of people are female. But the overwhelming majority happens to be male. There is no gender bias here, simply self-selection. This does not imply that the world’s greatest computer scientist cannot be a female, or even that most males would make better computer programmers than most females. But it does demonstrate that those who happen to love to work on computers (i.e. would do it even if they were not paid very much) are overwhelmingly boys. Is it surprising that a large majority of graduate students in electrical and computer engineering are males? If you were a faculty member in engineering looking for grad students (which I have been), would you not want to have students who absolutely love the subject? Or would you prefer to have a student who can tolerate the subject and only statistically should be capable of performing as well? Clearly, deciding in advance that a particular student loved your discipline based on the students’ gender would be wrong. But if you identified genuine enthusiasm in an interview during an interview, it would not be discriminatory to take that into account. And you MIGHT not end up with a gender-balanced research lab; but the statistics would not prove anything about your bias.

You may be able to provide some anecdotes of some females being covertly discriminated against. But you will also find in academia many cases of women faculty members being given overt advantages. When I was an engineering faculty member at the University of Michigan in the early 1990’s, our department was informed by the dean (I was at the meeting) that we could not hire any faculty members unless at least half were women. The applicant pool (around 400 PhD applicants for around two or three faculty openings) was overwhelmingly male, and the males were stronger candidates from much better schools. We were forced to interview and select a female candidate who would never have even been considered or interviewed if she had been a male. Of course, this is only an anecdote such as others mentioned. My only point is that any implication that gender discrimination in engineering is always, or even usually, against females is dramatically different than my experience. On the contrary, I have found that many faculty members (both male and female) in departments that do not historically attract females (e.g. mechanical and electrical engineering), when looking for grad students or deciding whether or not to fund a project, have frequently given females “the benefit of the doubt,” trying to encourage them. You cannot prove bias from statistical distributions of the number of females electing to enter or remain in different engineering disciplines. Self-selection is not necessarily the result of current or previous gender bias.

I also have a comment on previous posts related to the toys to which children are exposed. In my opinion, other than encouraging kids to be physically active and to avoid immorality, there is no reason to force your kids to play with one type of toy more than another one. This is as useless as giving your kid a gender-neutral name such as “Sam” or “Alex.” My sons both played sports, Legos, video games, guns, bows and arrows, etc., and they will likely both be liberal arts or business majors. My daughter, who played with dolls and still very much enjoys cake baking, is majoring in biomedical / electrical engineering. Why? Because they discovered that they like those subjects. How horrible! There must have been some major discrimination that forced them into those fields!

[Venkat89]

Population dynamics mght have a role in gender representation for future researchers in China and India. However, these cultures do NOT "discourage females from pursuing education" at all.

After working at NIH for a year I felt that a lot of the researchers were East Asian and South Asian (FOBs, not people born here). It's not like we're giving these people PhDs to go home instead of working here.

Also, I drew that those cultures discourage women from learning from the whole thing where people still kill their daughters at birth because they want to have sons. Those societies are very male dominated.

[MiamiDAP]

kill their daughters at birth because they want to have sons -

Because, in RURAL area of China, sons are bringing wife to a family, and daughter is leaving family when she marries. Only 1 child is allowed per family and family really need helping hands - from 4 very long trips to China (not me, my H).

[rc251]

Can we put a gender quota on Congress? I mean, they're not exactly 50/50 either.

[collegealum314]

I think Title IX for science is ridiculous. Performance and performance alone should be the determining factor for admission to undergrad and grad school. BTW, the resistance I encountered in school to my progress was far worse than these anecdotes of oppression people have cited in this thread. Yet, I don't feel I deserve anything more than those who outperformed me but didn't have to deal with what I went through.

Anyway, there are a few points I'd like to make.

1.) About half of my math and science teachers were female in high school. Isn't this fairly typical? Then why are we assuming that it must be that the male high school faculty is discouraging females from advancing in science.

2.) There are other reasons for gender disparity. I went to a technical school in high school and college, and it seems that the girls were far more practical than the guys. Most of the girls wouldn't get a PhD in math or physics simply because of the question, "What can you do with it?" In other words, even if you are outstanding there is not much of a payoff. Guys tend to have a more romantic view of being a physicist or mathematician.

3.) I am just as opposed to Title IX for boys in english and the humanities. Frankly, I would consider it an insult if I got a boost because of my gender.

[collegealum314]

double post...

[Venkat89]

misinformation on my part Miami. My bad.

I still wonder what we would find if we compared the gender numbers of American born science PhD students to the gender numbers of foriegn born PhD students in science fields.

[collegealum314]

^^I don't know. But based on my experience, I think bio and chemistry are fairly close to 50-50 genderwise for American-born grad students.

[Venkat89]

^I'd agree from looking at my TAs in chem and chem lab and from my experiences researching at a biomedical lab. However, that still leaves out physics, math, and engineering. It's my impression that those fields are dominated by Asian and white males. Whether that is for no good reason or because women strong at science are encouraged to not enter those fields but to enter bio and chem, I don't know.

[jessiehl]

Title IX, since it is statistically-based, cannot be defended against and forces schools to use inappropriate quotas.

No it isn't. Title IX is actually quite vague. Here's the actual text:

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Jimmy Carter's administration came up with the original policy implementation, which allows a school to take one of three approaches to compliance, only one of which is statistically-based. If a school chooses to take that particular approach, don't assume that it's somehow essential to Title IX, because it isn't.

In my opinion, other than encouraging kids to be physically active and to avoid immorality, there is no reason to force your kids to play with one type of toy more than another one.

Cognitive benefits? I certainly plan to encourage any future kids I have to play with blocks, for example, as it's useful for their spatial abilities.

My sons both played sports, Legos, video games, guns, bows and arrows, etc., and they will likely both be liberal arts or business majors. My daughter, who played with dolls and still very much enjoys cake baking, is majoring in biomedical / electrical engineering. Why? Because they discovered that they like those subjects. How horrible! There must have been some major discrimination that forced them into those fields!

This is a straw man (and the same sort of anecdote that you dinged me for). Just because your kids went into certain fields because they enjoyed them doesn't mean that there is no institutional discrimination against women in sci/eng, or disincentive for girls.

If you don't like anecdotes, you can find relevant research from Virginia Valian, Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, and Ben Barres.

[BunsenBurner]

Collegealum, I was not talking about HS. My HS chemistry teachers were all female, and they were wonderful and because of them I got hooked on science. However, in college I encountered a very different picture - only one female chemistry assistant professor, and the attitude among the faculty was that women did not belong in chemistry. However, that was a long time ago, but the progress is very, very slow judging by the data collected by the ACS (it is from 2 years ago, but I doubt the numbers changed drastically over the last two years):

Chemical & Engineering News: Education - Women Faculty Make Little Progress

Once again, the only news about the percentage of women faculty members in the top 50 chemistry departments is that there is no news. For the sixth year in a row that C&EN has examined this topic, there has been little growth. Women are still vastly underrepresented among full professors, despite slow and steady progress between the 2000–01 and 2005–06 academic years.

C&EN surveyed schools identified by the National Science Foundation as having spent the most money on chemical research in 2003, the latest year for which data are available. The schools were contacted by e-mail and telephone and were asked to provide the number of male and female tenured and tenure-track faculty holding full, associate, and assistant professorships with at least 50% of their salaries paid by the chemistry department in the 2005–06 academic year. These numbers exclude emeritus professors, instructors, and lecturers, as well as any faculty and endowed professors whose salaries are not paid by the chemistry department. The response rate was 100%.

In academic year 2005–06, women represent 13% of the total chemistry faculty at the top 50 institutions. This increase comes after holding at 12% in 2004–05 (C&EN, Sept. 27, 2004, page 32), 2003–04 (C&EN, Oct. 27, 2003, page 58), and 2002–03 (C&EN, Sept. 23, 2002, page 110). In absolute terms, the total number of faculty positions increased from 1,594.5 last year to 1,633, and the total number of positions filled by women increased from 197 to 213.

Hate to say it, but pure chemistry, not biochem or bio, is still an "old boys' club". It will take a generation or two, not Title IX, to change the picture.

[jessiehl]

I think Title IX for science is ridiculous.

Have you actually read either the text of Title IX or Carter's test of institutional compliance? Carter's test is athletics-specific, but you could just substitute in domain-related words. Title IX, contrary to popular opinion, is not at all written to be quota-centric. All it says is that educational institutions that receive federal money can't discriminate, and all the test says is that you have to demonstrate that you're accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

Edited to add: As it happens, I dislike quotas. I think they're a lazy person's (or school's, or society's) way to deal with a complicated, systemic problem. Just wanted to make that clear.

[pafather]

jessiehl,

"If you don't like anecdotes, you can find relevant research from Virginia Valian, Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, and Ben Barres."

I tried looking up the research of Spencer, Steele, & Quinn on the internet. As far as I can tell (from my quick review), their research leads them to conclude that (1) men and women who have interest and backgrounds in math tend to do comparably on easy tests but men do better on difficult math tests; and (2) women do not do well on tests when they are told ahead of time that there might be gender differences of results. I guess I do not see how this proves institutional discrimination.