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<p>It seems the thesis of intparent’s posts are that:
(1) all negative stereotypes about men are based on reality,
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(2) all negative stereotypes about females are false.</p>
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<p>Is this due to discrimination? There are a whole lot of factors contributing to this, for example, fewer number of women PhD holders with research areas the universities are looking for (it is very difficult to get an assistance professor job at these institutions), women with PhD making a choice to have and raise children, not wanting to be part of the tenure “race”, etc…</p>
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Ahem Sweet Briar has engineering too. It’s even ABET acredited. <a href=“http://sbc.edu/engineering[/url]”>http://sbc.edu/engineering</a></p>
<p>I agree with you that there are multiple factors at work, pariswit, as in your post #302. But I think there is a question about the extent to which these are free choices vs. the extent to which they are culturally influenced.</p>
<p>I have worked with a lot of men who have been supportive of me. I have been fortunate in that regard. I have not encountered much of anything in the way of overt discrimination. However, that is not to say that it didn’t exist in the past. On a different thread, I have pointed out that my mother was not permitted to take physics in high school–the physics teacher just wouldn’t let her into the class, and this was a small college town. The physics teacher wouldn’t let any women into the class. At my university, a woman in the generation ahead of me won the award for the top mathematics student, and organized a club for women interested in STEM fields. The dean of the college advised her to re-orient the club toward library science, as a field more suitable for women. A woman just a few years older than I am could not have gone to Caltech as an undergrad (at least, not if she wanted to go right after high school), regardless of her level of talent. They just didn’t take women. </p>
<p>It takes a while for the effects of undoing overt discrimination to percolate through the society.</p>
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<p>Right, that’s the point of the entire thread isn’t it? Why women are not taking those courses in college and beyond?</p>
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<p>Yet women are taking higher level math in greater % than men are, and getting better grades. SAT (either one) doesn’t include higher math at all, if by that we mean Calc+. Those test results suggest men are better at doing lower math in a timed setting, perhaps?</p>
<p>The stats I refer to are in the College Board link I posted a few posts ago.</p>
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<p>Just so! Also robotics clubs and all kinds of “STEM”-ish activities. Why are men doing that and not women? I don’t know.</p>
<p>In attacking the presence of men in many science and math fields, intparent seems to be emulating the same “egotistical bigotry” she is chastizing</p>
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Higher level math like Calc BC? 59% of students taking the Calculus BC exam were male in 2012.
The score difference is not limited to lower level math. In 2012, 50% of males scored 5 on the Calc BC exam, and 39% of females scored 5. There is a ~10:1 ratio between males and females towards the top of AMC, which focuses on the 99th percentile.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that the AMCs are completely different than AP tests in that students generally prepare alone, at home, rather than in a classroom. And there’ve only ever been 4(?) females on the US IMO team (the culmination of the AMC process). The percentage of women decreases as you move up in the AMC process where the focus shifts from lots of questions in a little time to six questions over multiple days</p>
<p>QuantMech, I love your location! </p>
<p>But things have changed since your mother’s era, now girls are going to college and graduating in record numbers more than boys. Girls can major in whatever field they desire, there is no institutionalized discrimination as before.</p>
<p>For me, the pressing question should be, why are boys falling behind when it comes to going and graduating from college?</p>
<p>intparent and NamelessStatistic both have valid perspectives. Their opinions are colored by their experiences, as is the case with everyone.</p>
<p>I am very familiar with two large computer software companies in NC. Company A has a super-geek culture and no family-friendly benefits. Management is totally about the bottom line, with no long view. Layoffs are common, and employees compete with each other for credit. In that company, there are very few women and the men fit just about every disagreeable stereotype that intparent has mentioned. At lunch, men go to the cafeteria and talk about computer programming; women stay in their offices to eat. </p>
<p>Company B is consistently recognized as one of the top companies in the world for which to work. There is on-site childcare, a gym, healthcare, etc, and the (generous) health benefits include same-sex partners as well as married spouses. Management has worked with employees on extended sick leave, telecommuting, and job sharing. It is a place where women and men are both valued, and there is a pervasive spirit of cooperation. There is an easy rapport among programmers of both genders, and lunch conversations are usually about children, vacations, or outside interests. </p>
<p>The corporate culture of Company A tolerates, even encourages, boorish behavior by men who were probably the lab equipment grabbers in college. Company B would not abide that type of behavior. Guess which company is far more successful in recruiting women? Guess which company is more financially stable? Company B has taken the long view and it has worked well. I even know several daughters of Company B employees who have decided to go into computer science – in part because they have seen that corporate culture and would like to work there.</p>
<p>A man working at Company B would be hard pressed to understand the concerns of a woman working at Company A. His experience would (fortunately) have been very different.</p>
<p>Re pariswit #309: Obviously, I agree that things have changed since my mother’s era. However, I think that the change is proceeding fairly slowly. For example, my mother could not take physics in high school at all. I took high school physics as one of 6 women students in a class of about 60. (We had a large lecture room where the physics lectures were given; there were about 300 students in the graduating class, and about 60 in the physics course that was the higher of two levels offered.) I’d guess that women now make up more than 10% of the Physics C students–at least, I’d hope so!</p>
<p>Some women thrive on being the “first woman” or “only woman” in a STEM setting, but I think that many do not. Some women are probably energized by breaking glass ceilings; but for others, breaking the ceiling causes some loss of momentum.</p>
<p>For that reason, I think that as near-equality prevails at one level of education or job experience, the % of women in the next level up tends to rise. However, the time to needed for near-equality to be achieved at the next higher level seems to be half a generation to a full generation (rough estimate, obviously).</p>
<p>I see no reason to assume that women are as interested in STEM subjects as men are. However, I also see no reason to look at the status quo, and say that the current level of differential involvement is the result of differential interests, if the involvement is still rising over time.</p>
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<p>Umm, not quite. In the first place, all of those so-called “stats” are self-reported by the SAT applicants. So, what is honors/AP is up to the applicant to check the box. (Fore example, on cc, I have often seen students/parents claiming that their student is taking a “pre-AP” course, and since there is no such thing, a student might check AP box on their SAT app when they should not.) Secondly, it is common knowledge girls have higher overall GPA’s than boys. But again, any ‘data’ by curriculum that CB has is not based on real transcripts, but on self-reported information by student applicants. (And as high schoolers learn in AP Stats – a so-called “AP Lite” well represented by females, btw – self-reported numbers are just a collection of anecdotes, but not data.)</p>
<p>Again, refer to the gender differences in Calc BC, not the AP Lite, Calc AB; refer to the mathy Physics B & C; or even AP Chem…</p>
<p>I am not sure that contest math is the best indicator of the mathematical ability of men and women. I believe it to be the case, from what I’ve read, that men and women tend to react differently to stressful situations (on the whole, and obviously there are differences within each gender). Some of this appears to be related to the rate at which dopamine is cleared from the brain. In stressful circumstances, fast dopamine clearers do better than they normally do, while slow dopamine clearers do worse unless they have learned how to manage the stress.</p>
<p>I think some of the differential effect of stress is connected with the differential binding of cortisol by different steroids–please take this last statement with a grain of salt, as I am dredging up material I read about 10 years ago and my recollection might be faulty.</p>
<p>In any event, I think that the various tests, including the AMC, AIME, USAMO, and Putnam create a certain level of stress for the test-takers. On the SAT M, at the high end, a difference of 30 points could result from a single question missed or answered correctly (depending on the curve for that sitting). </p>
<p>The USAMTS might be a better indicator, if women who were interested in mathematics were encouraged to try it. It is proof based, and students have a month to work on the problems!</p>
<p>bluebayou, do you have the gender breakdown for Physics C? If so, are more than 10% of the students who score a 5 female? </p>
<p>Even if the percentage is less than 10%, it could still represent an advance over my era–the top-level physics in my high school was not calculus-based.</p>
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<p>But we’re not in an era in which women aren’t allowed to take physics in high school, or in college. We’re not in an era in which there is systematic discrimination against women in higher education. Women always face work/life balance issues – but there’s nothing special about STEM in that regard, though STEM-mies tend to think that there is. Things have changed dramatically since your mother’s era and my mother’s era.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, things have changed since my high-school years, as well as changing since my mother’s era.</p>
<p>I agree that women in all fields face issues. There is nothing special about STEM in that regards. </p>
<p>It is easy to get buy-in that it is wrong for Caltech to exclude women. It is harder to get buy-in on the idea that the differential numbers by gender in some fields probably indicate a problem of unequal access. </p>
<p>I am not sure whether women are as under-represented among faculty members in history at top universities, as they are in STEM fields. I will take a quick look at that.</p>
<p>One of the historians I know has stated that there is (or at least was) considerable under-representation of Catholics on the faculties top universities–presumably not at Notre Dame or Georgetown!</p>
<p>Also, my point in raising the issue of enrollment in high-school physics classes was that change proceeds slowly. As equality is achieved at one level of education, the percentages of women at the next level up rise noticeably. At least, I think this is true, based on my observations.</p>
<p>A quick run-through of the Department of History at Harvard shows 48 faculty members, of whom 26 are men, 21 are women, and one I wasn’t certain about from the name (+ no picture and no gender pronouns in the write-up). At this point, I have not stratified the group by faculty rank, so this does include untenured faculty, unlike my data for the Department of Mathematics at Harvard. Still, at this stage, on the face of it, History does look rather different from Mathematics at Harvard.</p>
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<p>The single-test timed setting issue may be a contributor to the SAT and ACT math gender gaps; I don’t think it has anything to do with the level of math involved. (For example, the ACT incorporates some more advanced math but the gap is effectively the same. Going in the opposite direction, the results of recent NAEP tests show no male-female gap for 9- or 13-year-olds but do show a gap for 17-year-olds.)</p>
<p>It would be nice to see some research done by the College Board and ACT, Inc. to see the effects if any of the timed setting on male-female math score differences. I imagine they don’t do things like this because of the risk of finding that the tests have hard-to-correct flaws.</p>
<p>To add: In my field, it is rare for a department to have more than 10% women, and really rare for a department to have more than 20% women. “Special” is not the adjective I’d choose to describe this situation.</p>