Comments on: Title Nining science

By: Thought Mesh

Thought Mesh — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:35:32 +0000

We will tolerate no accidents…

You can’t make women above average everywhere, but that doesn’t stop the gender warriors….

By: hardlyb

hardlyb — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:15:49 +0000

Therese, you mentioned this friend as an example of “systematic exclusion”. Are you saying that her loser advisor is so common that it explains where there are fewer women PhD’s in chemistry? I doubt that anyone on the thread will insist that there aren’t such people, but if these people are rare, then sweeping changes to the law aren’t the way to proceed.

By: Therese

Therese — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:49:58 +0000

I have to comment on Jeff’s email – yes, my job does require a lot of interpersonal communication and that has been a big part of my success. Anyone needing a that includes lots of interaction with people would be very satisfied in any number of engineering jobs.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:46:23 +0000

I have mixed feelings about this – when I started college (late 70′s early 80′s) I took math and science courses, and did face some resentment/hostility from a few of the students, but also from some of the instructors (one was really openly hostile). Many fields such as finance and accounting back in the old days were predominantly male, but that has changed drastically. I do think one of the reasons for a lack of women in engineering is that while starting salaries are good, advancement is limited and a lot of the jobs are outsourced. If I had to choose between engineering, medicine, or heavy equipment operator, I’d choose medicine as the most lucrative, more jobs and all around more chance for advancement.

I think the key trouble here is that girls at an early age are still being pressured to not persue science/math. It is not the teachers, but girls themselves. In my DD’s PRIVATE school their are girls whose parents allow them to exhibit themselves on Youtube and to act seductively prissy. Don’t even get me started on the moves these 6th graders do in Dance Drill! To create more opportunity for girls to excel in science/math, parents have to stop dressing them like bimbos and treating 10-year old girls as teenagers.

By: Therese

Therese — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:05:16 +0000

Women just want to be treated the same – not tougher or easier treatment. My friend is extremely bright and knew when she was being disrespected by the old school professor.
Personally, I have had great professors and can’t complain.

By: jeff

jeff — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:30:40 +0000

Many if not most women enjoy jobs where they achieve results by bringing their personalities to bear on other people’s personalities. You can call it “communication” or “manipulation” or “seduction” or “salesmanship.”

Putting such women in jobs that don’t use their social skills is like putting a dog in a hermetically sealed room in which he can’t use his sense of smell. It’s hard to be happy when you aren’t using primary abilities.

Of course, it’s also cruel to prevent monkeys from climbing trees and eating bananas on the grounds that dogs don’t like to do such things.

In real life, most jobs involve a mix of skills, and most engineering jobs involve a lot more interpersonal communication than generally recognized. But you won’t learn this from the media or from a clueless highschool guidance counselor.

By: Harmony

Harmony — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:19:52 +0000

For the record, I’m a woman who graduated with an engineering degree. I experienced ZERO bias against women – in fact, the bias was (if anything) against the men.

In my opinion, Title IX is a poor attempt at equality in areas that were not meant to be equal. It is physically impossible for the best female athletes to play like the best male athletes – especially without steroids. Now if they start Title IX-ing Physics and engineering, how many men will that leave in college? Already colleges are dominated by women. I just don’t see how women are being marginalized. They are choosing what they want to study, so what’s the big deal? Are we going to become like a communist state and decide for our children what their majors will be?

By: Linda F

Linda F — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:45:44 +0000

What a ridiculous mess! I am a Physics teacher, and I have had the most supportive colleagues in my field, and from Physics professors, as well. I have seen the efforts to increase participation by women and minorities; they have been substantial.

I wrote about this further on my blog

http://teacherlingo.com/blogs/dragonlady328pt/archive/2008/07/17/gender-bias-in-physics.aspx

I’ll be bringing this up at the conference – this needs to be answered. We cannot afford these sneaky attempts to dismantle our science programs.

By: Technology In Teaching : Gender Bias in Physics

Technology In Teaching : Gender Bias in Physics — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:32:24 +0000

[...] it’s a great networking opportunity, as well as a chance to have fun with other women in Physics.Joanne Jacobs has a link to a NYT article about efforts to increase the numbers of women, and why the gender imbalance occurs.If the gender [...]

By: hardlyb

hardlyb — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:28:54 +0000

Your girlfriend in chemistry might have had a bad advisor, but there might be another explanation. When I was getting a PhD, the demands put on me and people in my cohort were primarily determined by us. The more driven and talented a student was, the more the advisor expected of them. I work in a university now, 30 years later, and that’s what I see this time, too. I specifically asked a professor I know well about this issue, and he said that he had to be more supportive of his women students because they were much less likely to be as confident as they should be. In fact, he had one student, whom he felt was the most talented student ever, he was concerned that she wouldn’t be as successful as she ought to be because she was too cautious.

The situation you describe could be the result of pressure from the department or university to be “too supportive”. The professor can’t be too demanding out of fear of complaints about forcing out female students. When I was in grad school less than 1/2 the people entering the program got out with PhD’s, so presumably half the women in such a program should fail, but if they were flunked out, then the professor could get labeled sexist, which would be the kiss of death…