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from the doesn't-stem-student's-interest dept.
Research into the obvious, but someone has finally done it: Three women researchers have studied the behavior of undergraduates in STEM fields, and concluded that there basically is no problem. From the abstract:
"The results show that high school academic preparation, faculty gender composition, and major returns have little effect on major switching behaviors, and that women and men are equally likely to change their major in response to poor grades in major-related courses. Moreover, women in male-dominated majors do not exhibit different patterns of switching behaviors relative to their male colleagues."
Furthermore current recruitment efforts to attract more women tend to be counterproductive. In an interview, the primary author says:
"Society keeps telling us that STEM fields are masculine fields, that we need to increase the participation of women in STEM fields, but that kind of sends a signal that it's not a field for women, and it kind of works against keeping women in these fields."
One of our female students told me that the women are interviewed endlessly, for one project or another: "tell us about your experience", "are you doing ok", "have you experienced sexism", and on, and on. That alone is enough to make them question their career choice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Virindi on Thursday September 07 2017, @10:57PM (2 children)
Exactly. The big problem is management who cannot revise their judgment based on demonstration of knowledge and skill, a problem with currently pervades western society. The best solution is to require that all managers are skilled in the job they are managing, which in the old timey days was a common requirement.
It is the same root cause for, in many cases, gender discrimination, discrimination against introverts, excess office politics, etc. All things which seriously harm the productivity of society and make the lives of honest people who care about their work difficult.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday September 07 2017, @11:03PM
Which after such a demonstration, it reverts back to the existing problem of management not being able to identify/recognize the value of knowledge and skill in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday September 07 2017, @11:44PM
"Scientific Management" wasn't completely useless. If it had been, it might never have taken off. It works fairly well in supervising factory workers in the sorts of industrial jobs that it was really designed for. Applying it to work environments that are substantially different doesn't always work well, however, and the worst thing is that when you have a company lead by scientific managers they shape everything else in favor of what they know how to manage - predictable assembly-lines with easily measured metrics.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?