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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: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 08 2017, @12:53PM (4 children)
Thank you for the best yet explanation of why those who lean right economically are very perturbed by the silliness we hear from those who lean left economically.
If you want to kill people by the hundreds of thousands, or millions, study the countries that have gone whole-hog leftist economics.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday September 08 2017, @02:43PM (2 children)
If you want to kill people by the hundreds of thousands, or millions, study the countries that have gone whole-hog leftist economics.
And if you want to see places that are hopelessly mired in conflict and war and oppression for its citizens, study the countries that have gone whole-hog conservative and religious.
The countries that are the best and safest to live in are places that are capitalist market economies with a very healthy dose of socialist welfare-state services, and which have almost completely abandoned religion. The more religion there is (whether it's worshiping some unseen deity, or some family dynasty as in one particular country), the worse it is.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 08 2017, @03:23PM (1 child)
Totally agree. That's why I was careful to specify economically right leaning rather than authoritarian right leaning.
Damn! It's almost like we need more than one right-left line for describing political opinion.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 08 2017, @03:59PM
Places that are extremely right-leaning economically aren't very nice to live in either, and result in a few ultra-wealthy people and everyone else dirt poor. As I said before, the best places are countries with mostly-free-market capitalist economies (so not far-left) but with substantial welfare-state protections and programs. For that economic axis, either extreme leads to very bad conditions.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Virindi on Friday September 08 2017, @05:07PM
I don't think it's entirely the same, but perhaps related. The problem you are talking about is that "left" income redistribution requires authoritarian power, and the further you go the more of it is needed. There have been plenty of other places that practiced high levels of such power, though, which instead continued the standard "crony capitalist" model. So while attempting to achieve equality of economic outcomes can cause those horrors, it is just one cause.
The real disease is the stubborn human belief that you can solve problems (often solved by abuse of government power) by giving government more power. It is the belief that government can be used to solve all of society's problems, rather than just act to keep a stable, peaceful environment for society to work out its own problems. Dealing with social problems by force is never successful unless views were already changing anyway.