[RickyGP]

To start off, I would like to get a few facts out of the way. We know for a fact that the "wage gap"exists because men take on not just the majority of jobs in Science and Technology fields but in any of the jobs that build, protect and maintain modern civilization.

Feminists are very much aware of this same fact, as demonstrated by the Matt Taylor bowling shirt affair, and this video by Laci Green in which she mentions the disparity that exists in these types of jobs. Of course these women blame 'çasual misogyny' and 'patriachy' for why there aren't as many women in science and technology.

What I wonder however, is if they have any correct point? From my own personal observation, I have always seen boys and young men naturally gravitate to the sciences just out of a natural curiousity. The desire to find out how things worked. I have seen this curiosity mostly in men, and the occasional woman. So I personally see the reason why men take on 80% of jobs in science and technology, is borne out of a natural curiosity and passion that girls simply do not possess in the same amount as men. Sort of like why young girls buy Barbies, and boys GI-Joes and Transformers.

But, in your opinion, is here some kind of genuine societal pressure that is ACTUALLY discouraging women from entering these fields?

I am not talking about 'Rape Culture", "Patriarchy"or any other feminist/SJW crap.

I am just wondering if science and technology is missing women who would kick ass in these fields?

[Kingsley Davis]

(11-18-2014 08:25 PM)RickyGP Wrote:  

To start off, I would like to get a few facts out of the way. We know for a fact that the "wage gap"exists because men take on not just the majority of jobs in Science and Technology fields but in any of the jobs that build, protect and maintain modern civilization.

Feminists are very much aware of this same fact, as demonstrated by the Matt Taylor bowling shirt affair, and this video by Laci Green in which she mentions the disparity that exists in these types of jobs. Of course these women blame 'çasual misogyny' and 'patriachy' for why there aren't as many women in science and technology.

What I wonder however, is if they have any correct point? From my own personal observation, I have always seen boys and young men naturally gravitate to the sciences just out of a natural curiousity. The desire to find out how things worked. I have seen this curiosity mostly in men, and the occasional woman. So I personally see the reason why men take on 80% of jobs in science and technology, is borne out of a natural curiosity and passion that girls simply do not possess in the same amount as men. Sort of like why young girls buy Barbies, and boys GI-Joes and Transformers.

But, in your opinion, is here some kind of genuine societal pressure that is ACTUALLY discouraging women from entering these fields?

I am not talking about 'Rape Culture", "Patriarchy"or any other feminist/SJW crap.

I am just wondering if science and technology is missing women who would kick ass in these fields?

"But, in your opinion, is here some kind of genuine societal pressure that is ACTUALLY discouraging women from entering these fields?"

Other bitches. If a queen bitch decides that science is the new black then the herd follows.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

Good question. And yes, I do see pressure on girls not to enter the science field.

It comes from other girls.

Anyone who has been in high school for more than a day knows there are no humans on the planet more conformist, judgmental, and in-your-face than teenage girls. There is a reason the movies stereotype them the way they do.

And teenage girls are the first to chastise any of the girls who put being scientific before getting their nails done.

Boys don't care -- especially nerdy boys. They love to have girls around at their geek parties. I remember the one science/math team girl we had in high school was provoking fights between the nerds because she was so sought after. It's the teenage girls that rejected her.

It's not professors because they need more students to justify their jobs. And it's not the employers, who need to meet quotas. And if the non-boss science guys are a-holes to women at work, well, they're generally not very nice to other men either. Ever have to deal with tech services at your job? Not exactly the welcome wagon.

Women should look in the mirror if they want more women in engineering. But since women tend not to self-criticize, and blame others instead, they'll blame the patriarchy for making teenage girls the way they are.

***

Nice observation about boys being more curious. The other side of that coin is all the times we got punished in the classroom for our curiosity. Boys are curious; the conformist women in the school system do their best to stomp that out. This, I think, is the real story here.

I've told about how I was the best reader in my first grade class but got punished because I did extra work and read ahead of schedule. I was curious as to what the other stories in our "reader" were like, so I read the whole thing. My "breaking the rules" was more important to them than me reading on a fourth grade level or better in first grade. My desk was moved into the hallway for a week, where I sat, alone, like a dog. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a story like this.

[WD-40]

Women generally do not care to specialize in fields populated by men who are assumed to be of low socio-sexual rank.

For that reason we do not find women lining up to be garbage collectors or raising complaints about systemic misogyny as a deterrent to female career development in municipal waste management.

The only reason why they are complaining about science, IT and engineering is because they feel that the socio-sexually low-ranking male nerds are undeserving of the financial and social recognition that accrues to them as a result of doing necessary dirty work that women don't want to do.

[catoblepa]

coming from a paesant stock my female ancestors were doing a lot of paesant work outdoor and didn't care much about makeup, clothes or fashion so I suppose those are the kind of interests you develop trough acculturation. what makes men more daring, risk-taking and competitive is the nature of our sexuality: hardly any woman will come knocking at our door to offer herself spontaneously so we have to strive to get female attention and companionship and that ultimately makes men on average more successful in everything including science.

[Badamson]

(11-18-2014 08:25 PM)RickyGP Wrote:  

I am just wondering if science and technology is missing women who would kick ass in these fields?

I would say, NO. I don't think curiosity is the main issue. For one thing, men think more logically and mathematically(on average,) whereas women are more emotional. That's why men excel in these fields. Science and mathematics are emotionless. They don't care what gender you are and all that matters is if you can deliver the empirical data.

If anything, there is a tremendous amount of societal pressure to get women into these areas. It's much easier to get women into the corporate fields where there are a lot of different ways for a person to be effective. In technology, you either can solve the equations or you can't. Also, to reach a high level of technical expertise to the extent that you would have a major position requires an incredible commitment to learning. If a woman takes a break to have a couple kids, she's going to be way behind.

There's a reason why the stereotype of the "computer programmer geek"
exists. It's because one often has to sacrifice any social life or dating startng at a young age, to dedicate themselves to master these incredibly complicated systems. Sometimes this is done involuntarily(a kid sucks at sports and is awkward so he stays inside and starts reading astronomy books.) Even unattractive women typically always have plenty of attention. Rarely are they forced to become completely isolated to where they would build a high tolerance to boring subjects and turn their energy to weird science stuff.

I don't consider myself a nerd or a bad looking guy, but I can easily look back at time periods in my life where I went 6 months without hanging out with or talking to anyone and became enveloped in my own tedious(non-scientific) projects. A lot of girls can't even watch an old black and white movies 20 minutes without getting bored. They're just not used to it.

Any woman who wants to entire the tech industry would be welcomed if she has the answers. It's just not something you can BS your way through. Either you can program the spaceship's master computer or you can't. Getting a job at most normal companies is based on personality and background credentials. If you want to work in a technical job at Microsoft or somewhere similar, you will undergo rigorous testing and you will have to prove exactly what you know.

Here's a classic video on gender gaps:

[Parlay44]

Women just aren't as committed to the work as men are. It's something they do for money not for the love of the field. Plus the fact that some/most of them drop out to have kids and may never come back.

[davyjose]

(11-18-2014 08:25 PM)RickyGP Wrote:  

But, in your opinion, is here some kind of genuine societal pressure that is ACTUALLY discouraging women from entering these fields?

As someone who has worked in tech all his adult life (and been into computers since I was 6), there is none whatsoever.

Women have found their way into plenty of fields en-masse which were traditionally male dominated. Funny how the patriarchy hasn't stopped them showing up in large numbers in the likes of marketing or finance, or any other industry or profession which was traditionally male dominated.

They stay away from STEM because quite frankly it hurts their brains, not because of the "patriarchy" or "casual misogyny".

If it's something that interests them, women will find a way in. They don't give a shite about STEM, so they don't go there. Simple really.

[Ensam]

Yes, I think you can make a strong case that a lot of it is societal. Most of the women I know who have PhDs in science or engineering and are successful in their careers are foreign.

But as others have pointed out it's not necessarily men who are keeping them out. In the US a chick in her late teens/early 20s has so many options that are much more enticing and easier than science or engineering. I don't really blame them for not choosing to go down a very hard path.

[Hades]

(11-18-2014 08:57 PM)WD-40 Wrote:  

Women generally do not care to specialize in fields populated by men who are assumed to be of low socio-sexual rank.

For that reason we do not find women lining up to be garbage collectors or raising complaints about systemic misogyny as a deterrent to female career development in municipal waste management.

The only reason why they are complaining about science, IT and engineering is because they feel that the socio-sexually low-ranking male nerds are undeserving of the financial and social recognition that accrues to them as a result of doing necessary dirty work that women don't want to do.

Good post.
As to the bolded, there's a pretty hilarious parks and rec episode that deals with that exact topic, with the outcome you would expect.

[Parlay44]

Maybe we should just lower the bar so girls can play too

[The Lizard of Oz]

I enjoyed the light trolling touch of the OP. It's the sort of trolling that is easy on your bowels; it goes down smoothly.

Could it be that science and technology are "missing women" who will "kick ass" -- oh, not for those reasons, naturally -- but perhaps for some other, ineffable reasons? Really, could it be, after all?

LOL.

[DrewP]

I've known many women with very high academic achievements. Women's brains do have some advantages over men's. Women are more focused and disciplined, less scatter-brained, have better memories, and are better learners. However, what they totally lack is the ability to think for themselves.

Rarely will you see a woman innovate or improve upon some process. Once they learn "the way things are done," that's the way they're done, period.
Rarely will you see a woman synthesize information from her own observations. If some piece of information is not formally taught, it simply does not exist to most women, no matter how clearly it can be observed by people like us.
Rarely will you see a woman embrace irreverent opinions. Women's political views generally just correspond to what you're taught in elementary school; everyone is equal and special, drugs are bad, safety comes first.

Tech jobs, more so than any other field, demand that you can think beyond what you've been taught. That's why they are dominated by men.

[Vitriol]

(11-18-2014 09:44 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

In the US a chick in her late teens/early 20s has so many options that are much more enticing and easier than science or engineering. I don't really blame them for not choosing to go down a very hard path.

I think this is an important point. An American girl who has been used to getting the rockstar treatment because she's at least a little above average in looks (that's all it takes for male resources and attention) is going to try to maintain that lifestyle. So she's going to be more likely to use college as a networking event / social experience than an opportunity to actually learn anything. Obviously, plenty of employers will still be lining up to give her pretend jobs even if she only took classes where she watched movies and "wrote" (by some dork who thought he was gonna get some pussy) a one page essay that took twenty minutes. This is a systematic problem in American culture that's the elephant in the room about issues like this, but it won't be addressed because American politics is about 40 years behind what's actually happening, so women are still "oppressed" and don't have opportunities and all that bullshit. Even though an intelligent, good looking girl has a thousand times more opportunity to do well than a similarly situated male in 2014.

[Grange]

Larry Summers got blasted for even bringing it up, but the bell curve for female intelligence is narrower with smaller tails than the bell curve for male intelligence, so at the extreme ends there are fewer women--both at the extreme lower end, with the severely mentally disabled, and at the extreme higher end, with the kind of people who do well in tech/science jobs. It's not 50/50 and never will be in the relevant part of the population for tech/science jobs, even if all the other factors in this thread weren't relevant.

[StrikeBack]

I work in STEM, most people around me have PhDs in STEM, and are men.

I know people from all walks of life through various hobbies. I don't know any other group who pedestalise women more than the STEM guys, collectively. They're constantly thirsty for more women in their fields. Charges of misogyny thrown at those guys are flat out BS. Only in STEM that ugly-plain girls can be elevated to prom queen status.

[Tuthmosis]

Why doesn't someone do a study on the percentage of otherwise intelligent women who don't enter a STEM field because they were too busy pissing away their time on their iPhones, being involved in time-consuming "clubs" on their college campus, or attention-whoring on their Facebook accounts around the clock?

[Suits]

(11-18-2014 11:36 PM)DrewP Wrote:  

I've known many women with very high academic achievements. Women's brains do have some advantages over men's. Women are more focused and disciplined, less scatter-brained, have better memories, and are better learners.

Oh, really?



The thing I've seen evidence for is that girls and women are better at

(1) shutting up,

(2) sitting in neat rows and doing whatever the f**k they are told to, just because everyone else is doing it and because they are terrified of genuine social interaction, such as interacting with anyone other than

(x) the cool teachers,
(y) men that they need to obtain free resources or services from or
(z) the two or three females with whom they've more or less socially quarantined themselves

The term "scatter-brained" itself is a contemptuous term itself, used by women to deride male curiousity and interest in the world around them. If a man or a young boy is not focus on the task you've placed in front of him, he isn't scatter-brained.

He just isn't a f**king moron who is oblivious to the fact that what you've decided that he needs to do with his time is super boring and he has better things to occupy his mind with.

I have to laugh at the suggestion that women's brains are more focused and disciplined. I think what you are referring to that fact that they are incapable of

thinking for themselves,

so they just do whatever they are told to do without questioning it.

Better memories and better learners?

Sure, if we are only talking about assigned school work as opposed to the greater mass of information.

The problem with women is not that they have no ability to innovate, although that is true. Most men never innovate either. Coming up with a genuinely new idea is the purview of a select number of geniuses.

The problem with girls and women is that they have no real interest in learning. They'll memorize their textbook so that they can get their token pat on the back (attentions whores that they are) and continue to enjoy the emotions that come with feeling superior to their peers, but they have no actual interest in what they are learning.

They just like being a grade A student, because it puts them at the top of the a pecking order. They could be learning utter nonsense (and often are) and it wouldn't make a different.

Men, young and old, usually ask a very important question: is this information useful or at least interesting to me? If the answer is "no," the male mind will move onto information of actual relevance.

In a society that has been structured to place a high level of importance on spending 17 years of your life memorizing information, only to write an exam and then move onto other information, typically non-sequentially, women may certainly seem to be better learners.

Red-pill, however, questions this belief.

[JWLZG]

Thanks for bringing that up, OP. I'd been thinking about that too, in the wake of Gamergate and Shirtstorm.

I've got a number of points about this which I'll link to issues others have brought up. Looking at the judo class across the courtyard, I think this is a succinct statement on female representation in traditionally male-dominated fields in general.

Firstly, I'd like to call bullshit on the idea of institutionalised misogyny or a boy-club atmosphere in STEM. This isn't politics or the police force. StrikeBack has a point about the thirst and the penis paradise factor in the field. Yes, it's a totem of masculinity, but not in the alpha-footballer sense. Rather, STEM guys tend to be a core manifestation of the sort of masculine traits that maths and science represents -- systematic problem solving via spatio-numerical methods. It's basically cognate to the autism-spectrum being a condition of the heightened male brain -- incidentally, this is representative of more than a few cases in STEM -- more on that later. Typically, guys in these fields would have little of a history in relating to the opposite sex in their formative years.

I also want to point out, even in STEM the correlation of female representation within each discipline as being inversely proportional to the 'hardness' of that field. Look at how many girls there are in environmental engineering compared to Comp Sci or Software engineering.

Look at the the girls you know in these professions. As someone who has slaved away far too long in a STEM major, I will tell you that they are definitely towards the masculine end of their gender. I'm not just talking about their cognitive slant -- it shows up physically too; they tend to wear backpacks to uni, dress a bit more manly and a few even have more masculine jawlines. I swear I couldn't imagine a few of them wearing a dress or makeup, or they don't look natural when they do so. (And you thought Aussie chicks couldn't be less feminine as it were, but I digress.)

So their intellectual makeup is really an extension of the sort of masculine-end qualities that they were born with. The ones I know go as far as to believe that they are exceptions in terms of the feminine brain -- vis-à-vis their peers in high school, they actually clicked with spatial reasoning abilities -- something they accept that girls aren't inherently slanted towards. While their brains may still be womans' brains at the end of the end, they're still bloody switched on at what they do, and I have no doubt that some of them will make far better engineers than I'll ever be.

(11-18-2014 08:46 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

Nice observation about boys being more curious. The other side of that coin is all the times we got punished in the classroom for our curiosity. Boys are curious; the conformist women in the school system do their best to stomp that out. This, I think, is the real story here.

I've told about how I was the best reader in my first grade class but got punished because I did extra work and read ahead of schedule. I was curious as to what the other stories in our "reader" were like, so I read the whole thing. My "breaking the rules" was more important to them than me reading on a fourth grade level or better in first grade. My desk was moved into the hallway for a week, where I sat, alone, like a dog. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a story like this.

It's quite amazing to see pre-teen children embody gender-specific qualities via play-acting -- and their pastimes. I still recall when playing in the schoolyard and weekend at that age, the boys would tend to gravitate towards investigative and adventurous roles.

Like you, I also recall having my inquisitive side being curtailed while insisting on observing and wanting to accompany my parents doing the gardening or cooking.

I think young children are actually naturally red-pill like that. In a play I acted in in high school -- The Alchemist -- I recall the female protagonists little brother and sister yelling "I wanna be an astronaut!" and "I wanna be a ballerina!". Somehow I can't see those lines getting past the SJW brigade unscathed were this to show in Broadway today.

...

(11-18-2014 09:03 PM)Badamson Wrote:  

There's a reason why the stereotype of the "computer programmer geek"
exists. It's because one often has to sacrifice any social life or dating startng at a young age, to dedicate themselves to master these incredibly complicated systems. Sometimes this is done involuntarily(a kid sucks at sports and is awkward so he stays inside and starts reading astronomy books.) Even unattractive women typically always have plenty of attention. Rarely are they forced to become completely isolated to where they would build a high tolerance to boring subjects and turn their energy to weird science stuff.

Again, this is a gender-quality thing. Girls are more socially-oriented being than girls. When was the last time you saw a chick go to the flicks on her own? Science and engineering requires a fuckload of hardcore swotting which not only is a drawn-out process, but often a lonely one. In the weeks that you'd see Arts, Music and Law students on campus hanging out at the pub or lawns, STEM kids are buried under their books and computers. Whether the Sheldon Cooper stereotype is a cause or consequence of such habits is debateable, but I can tell you that there's a completely different methodical approach to study in terms of the social psyche.

(11-18-2014 08:46 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

It comes from other girls.

Anyone who has been in high school for more than a day knows there are no humans on the planet more conformist, judgmental, and in-your-face than teenage girls. There is a reason the movies stereotype them the way they do.

And teenage girls are the first to chastise any of the girls who put being scientific before getting their nails done.

Boys don't care -- especially nerdy boys. They love to have girls around at their geek parties. I remember the one science/math team girl we had in high school was provoking fights between the nerds because she was so sought after. It's the teenage girls that rejected her.

I agree about girls being more judgmental and exclusionary in terms of pursuits. STEM girls, much like girls in rugby and aikido, tend to be outliers among their peer groups. It's really after leaving the tribal nature of high school that they can flock towards their kind.

Conversely, how often do guys have a go at one of their own for ending up in nursing or teaching?

[Benoit]

(11-18-2014 08:25 PM)RickyGP Wrote:  

I am just wondering if science and technology is missing women who would kick ass in these fields?

What exactly do you think is missing that women could add?

• A more nurturing method of fabricating silicon chips?
• A space shuttle that really listens to your problems?
• A robot that will take out the bins and give you a back rub without complaining?
• A way of measuring atomic mass without judging or shaming differently massed atoms?
  

Every female inventor and scientist is celebrated way beyond what her achievements merit.

It is a high-status job with great rewards for women who can handle the intellectual requirements.

[Suits]

It's important to note, that while women may have launched feminism 1.0 because they weren't impressed by the obvious gap between the male sphere and the female sphere, modern feminism is perpetuated by women who want to force other younger women to take pursue jobs that the younger women have no interest in, simply because the older women have a massive inferiority complex and desperately need to believe that their own lack of achievement in life is because of their "preferences" and not their own inabilities.

They'll pressure young girls to waste their fertile years pursuing STEM careers, just because the idiot feminists desperately want to say, "I told you so! Women can do anything men can do...and they can do it better and in heels!"

Sorry bitches....ain't going to happen. Mother nature doesn't take orders from your kind.

[BortimusPrime]

(11-18-2014 08:46 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

Nice observation about boys being more curious. The other side of that coin is all the times we got punished in the classroom for our curiosity. Boys are curious; the conformist women in the school system do their best to stomp that out. This, I think, is the real story here.

I've told about how I was the best reader in my first grade class but got punished because I did extra work and read ahead of schedule. I was curious as to what the other stories in our "reader" were like, so I read the whole thing. My "breaking the rules" was more important to them than me reading on a fourth grade level or better in first grade. My desk was moved into the hallway for a week, where I sat, alone, like a dog. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a story like this.

I hate this kind of shit so much. I remember in middle school I had to write a paper on the history of science, which happened to be something I was interested in for a change, as opposed to the usual writing assignments about liberal talking points or the ole' 5 paragraph essay on the 19th century poetry of Percy Fannyfluffer Poofington III. Anyways, I actually put effort in for a change and ended up with 8 pages instead of the expected 2. And I got a bad grade for not just word salad fluffing up to the expected page count as was expected, but instead actually researching the subject and trying to cram all that information in.

The irony is that all the media tropes about children being discouraged in school are always girls who desperately want to study science and are put down cruelly by their male science teacher in a show of comical villainy.

[Parlay44]

In a free market economy women are given a blank check at puberty and told "Princess you need to cash this and spend every penny and more before you hit 30 and don't worry about going into debt or getting fat or learning any life skills because Prince Charming will be there waiting to save you".

Why the hell would they go into science or engineering? Would you?

[BallsDeep]

(11-18-2014 08:57 PM)WD-40 Wrote:  

The only reason why they are complaining about science, IT and engineering is because they feel that the socio-sexually low-ranking male nerds are undeserving of the financial and social recognition that accrues to them as a result of doing necessary dirty work that women don't want to do.

[DJ-Matt]

Did you say MISS-O-GYNY ?

Credit to kbell, this song is great. Sounds like they even dug up the original Disney MP backing track to sing with.