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How's that STEM education working out?
Much of the public enthusiasm for STEM education rests on the assumption that these fields are rich in job opportunity. Some are, some aren’t. STEM is an expansive category, spanning many disciplines and occupations, from software engineers and data scientists to geologists, astronomers and physicists.
What recent studies have made increasingly apparent is that the greatest number of high-paying STEM jobs are in the “T” (specifically, computing).
Earlier this year, Glassdoor, a jobs listing website, ranked the median base salary of workers in their first five years of employment by undergraduate major. Computer science topped the list ($70,000), followed by electrical engineering ($68,438). Biochemistry ($46,406) and biotechnology ($48,442) were among the lowest paying majors in the study, which also confirmed that women are generally underrepresented in STEM majors.
So study cybersecurity, not slime molds.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @07:53PM (33 children)
Sweet jesus, get over it already. We aren't in an equal world just yet, expect people to keep pushing for equality with varying degrees of reasonableness. Don't let a small handful of overly zealous people turn you into an old codger with a nice lawn.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:12PM (5 children)
Equality is the idea that all people are the same, with the same inherent ability. Diversity is the idea that all people have their own, unique strengths and weaknesses.
If people are equal, and women are truly equal to men, and all races are equal, then what difference does it make whether an office is full of white men or black women? So there shouldn't be a problem with a group's representation.
But if diversity is such a huge deal, then that admits that there are inherent differences between men and women and members of different races.
So it turns out that equality and diversity are at odds with one another, yet both are being paradoxically pushed together.
So, my question: are men and women equal, where each has the same natural aptitude for any given task, or are they diverse, each with their own natural strengths and weaknesses? In one scenario, it doesn't matter who is represented, since all will get the same job done just as well. In another, one group is naturally better than another at a given task or field.
Riddle me that.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Aegis on Friday November 03 2017, @08:20PM (4 children)
Reasonable people might wonder why the demographic makeup of that population differed so widely from the general population if everyone was truly equal.
They might wonder what the statistical likelihood of that occurring was. And, whether a confounding factor is a more likely cause than random happenstance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @12:46AM
And we're all reasonable people here, of course.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday November 04 2017, @03:16AM (2 children)
What, like the representation of women plumbers, miners, electricians, ditch diggers, high-rise construction workers, crane operators, longshoremen, deep sea welders, arctic fishermen, whalers, dry wall hangers, ... ?
Oh, how about teachers and nurses?
Watching your mind go from 0 RPM to RACISM! is astounding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @04:41PM
You triggered fools are a sight to behold.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday November 04 2017, @04:57PM
For starters, in this case we're talking about sexism, not racism.
Also, you are right that we should be doing the same sort of shift for other professions. And there has been: For example, there has been an increase of women in mining [minesmagazine.com], and an increase of men in nursing [modernmedicine.com].
There's currently no evidence to suggest that men are inherently better than women at most STEM professions. There is substantial evidence that women are discriminated against trying to get into and work in STEM professions. Which means that women who are smart enough to help build rockets are getting pushed into teaching a bunch of 5-year-olds instead. This actually happened to my step-sister: She was trained as an engineer, aced all the exams, and found that her biggest problem was not her training but the customers deciding they weren't going to listen to that "chick" and then blaming her when things broke exactly the way she had predicted. The disrespect and discrimination was bad enough that she gave up and switched to early childhood education.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 03 2017, @08:29PM (12 children)
Not all people have the same ability. Even if they are the same color, or different colors.
Some people are better at STEM. Others may be more skilled in other areas such as pontificating about French history or basket weaving. Others may be good at figuring out how to best skirt the spirit of the law while technically staying just within it's boundaries.
The skill level of two individuals may be unrelated to the factors we think of as diversity. People should be hired on merit, without favoring other factors. Whether or not skill has any relationship to color / gender / etc is irrelevant. If skill is tied to color/gender, then hire the skilled. If skill is NOT tied to color/gender, then hire the skilled. Whether or not there is a relationship between the two is irrelevant. Just hire on merit.
But then, compensation comes into play. And willingness to be abused, and in how many different ways, by management becomes a factor.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:52PM (11 children)
Two problems with your ideas. First, sometimes damn good people get eliminated because of bad teaching material. When I was a senior in college, my dad tried to change careers by taking an introductory programming class at a local community college. I couldn't do his homework assignments after the third week, that's how hard they were. So if I had started in that podunk community college program instead of the prestigious university I attended, I would have washed out and assumed I was too stupid to make it as a developer. Some programs are poorly structured, some instructors are awful.
Second and more importantly, race, creed, and color contribute to comfort. I was a white heterosexual Christian male in a CS classroom full of white heterosexual Christian males taught by white heterosexual Christian males. (I'm atheist now, not that it matters.) I had zero social anxieties in any of my CS classes, which made it easier to focus on the material. If I attended a college were all of my classmates and instructors were, for the sake of argument, Asian (and Asian American) women or African (and African American) men, that probably would have made the difference between making the cut and washing out. So if you want to tell some woman, "If you can't deal with feeling socially isolated in the field, get out" then by the exact same logic you have to evict me too. And I very much suspect that many other people in our field are in the same situation. James Damore, et al seem to miss that. "We shouldn't have to account for diversity" isn't what he's saying, what he's really saying is "We shouldn't have to account for diversity because the current monoculture works strongly in my favor." They just lack the self-awareness to realize it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:55PM
s/If I attended a college were all of my classmates and instructors were/If I attended a college where all of my classmates and instructors were/
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 03 2017, @09:03PM
You're right that the monoculture does work strongly in my favor. White Christian male. But I would like to think that even if it didn't, I would get along with everyone around me. But I've never had to test that. So while I'm usually comfortably pessimistic and cynical, in this case maybe I've allowed myself to become naively optimistic.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 03 2017, @09:58PM (6 children)
I am utterly unable to even see where you're coming from on the second paragraph there. I, as a feather-not-dot indian, have never once felt excluded in any way by the people I've gone to school or worked with because of my race. Not anywhere in the country that I've worked at numerous blue and white collar jobs since I got my first job in highschool. I think you're just working through some white male guilt or something.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @03:31AM (1 child)
Screw the scientific method, your individual experience is all we need to know in how every other person's experience is.
Find it amusing when those that claim to support scientific principles, but then espouse anecdotal (and unverifiable) evidence because it fits their innate bias.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:57AM
I do not know why you come to a forum of opinions seeking for scientific method supporting people's thesis, but I guess a beer would do you good.
On my personal anecdote though, I kind of support the opinion that in general race does not really matter in programming jobs. When your ass and your team's ass is on the line you want your team to perform and make it easier for you and everybody to spend that time the best possible. I work with a Philipino and I enjoy his companionship in my team as well as his competence.
I work in Poland by the way, pretty much a white country, and I am quite dark skinned Portuguese, hairy and all. There are obvious physical differences but I never felt that my competence or friendliness was in any way related to my skin color. I also have a ginger in my team and we constantly play the stereotypes for the theater that they are. My whole attitude towards work, is: I am a professional and will only go as low as cordiality if I do not like the person, otherwise I try to make my workplace socially relaxed with focus on sharing knowledge and improvement. Maybe it's the nice people of Poland, but I feel good here.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday November 04 2017, @05:49PM (3 children)
Out of curiosity, how obvious is it from casual inspection that you're an American Indian? There are lots of people that are part Native who don't look like it and thus don't receive any kind of discrimination because of it.
One of my employers rejected a potential candidate for a developer job solely because he was a dot-not-feather Indian - he announced that fact to his entire team (I left shortly thereafter). A friend of mine who worked in HR described another candidate who had all the right experience, aced the interview, and in the post-interview meeting learned that nobody wanted to hire her solely because she was black. So don't tell me that this kind of stuff is in my imagination, because I've seen it happening right before my very eyes. And we're talking about events happening in 2015, not 1965.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 04 2017, @06:24PM (2 children)
Depends on the time of year. In the winter it's strictly bone structure and hair. Once the sun starts warming up though I go from zero to getting mistaken for mexican PDQ.
Now that I've answered that though, why are you interested? Were you planning on telling me my heritage doesn't count because of skin color? You know, I take it back. It's damned easy today to find bigots. Just look for anyone who subscribes to identity politics.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday November 04 2017, @07:28PM (1 child)
Do I think the racial discrimination I directly observed is real? Yes.
Do I think it's wrong? Yes. Not just morally wrong, but leads to sub-optimal institutions, because the capable people that don't fit the desired stereotypes aren't hired, promoted, or otherwise rewarded.
I think, as the vast majority people who study it think, that the variations within any particular identity group are far greater than the differences between the averages in the groups.
Lastly, I think that some of the discrimination out there is the manifestation of internal biases, where most people naturally react to others based on visual cues that are not in fact accurate. For example, face symmetry can have a huge effect on your life.
I don't subscribe to the (silly) idea that whoever is the most victimized by that discrimination is the best person to pick for a job. But I do subscribe to the idea that if I'm interviewing 2 equally experienced candidates, and they both do equally well, I should err on the side of countering my own bias by hiring the person I'm naturally biased against, because I've likely downgraded their performance in my head prior to making the decision. And that's what affirmative action is all about.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 04 2017, @09:23PM
Okay, let's come at this from another direction then.
Discriminating against people based on skin color is foolish and creates hatred in those discriminated against.
When you discriminate in favor of someone based on skin color, you necessarily discriminate against everyone else based on the same.
Thus every time you do this you are fanning the flames of racially based hatred for the demographic you extended preference towards and for yourself.
The above also applies to gender through the exact same logic chain.
You are not making the world a better place; you are filling it with a double scoop of hate.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @10:33PM
So you're uncomfortable around people with different racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds? That's the problem, not that there's a lot of white guys in tech. There are lots of white guys in America, and it hasn't been that long since a computer cost several months wages for most people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @01:29AM
Wow, pops. What decade did you go to uni then? The '50s? Ever considered the possibility that your experience doesn't apply to the majority? I didn't think so you myopic grey haired boomer piece of shit.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday November 03 2017, @08:40PM (13 children)
I'm not the OP, but I'm all for equality. It does seem very one sided though. All the advances in equality seem to benefit women.
-- When can men opt out of a pregnancy?
-- When will women get comparable sentences for crimes committed?
-- When will divorce become more equitable?
-- When can the men get on the life raft alongside the women and children?
-- When will women (even hardcore feminists) pay for first dates?
#mentoo
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday November 03 2017, @09:04PM
Your post leads me to wonder . . .
Which will come first?
1. Man lands on Mars?
2. Male contraceptives?
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(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @09:18PM (2 children)
When they start being able to carry the fetus to term inside themselves.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday November 03 2017, @11:52PM (1 child)
I'm not advocating for forcing abortions on other people, but rather a process where I can opt out.
Fill out a form, pay 1/2 the cost of an abortion, possibly a little extra to cover time off work or to help make up for the ordeal. After that, it would be up to the woman to either abort or raise the kid on her own (with no child support $$).
It is cold, heartless and kinda fucked up? Ya. But it's also pretty fucked up that someone can be forced to pay for child support for 18 years because a One Night Stand wants to have a baby..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Saturday November 04 2017, @03:24AM
Some would say the lesson from this is that there is no such thing as a one night stand, not really. You should also take responsibility for your actions. If you can't stand the person to be around them to raise a kid, maybe don't have sex with that person? Or be prepared to shoulder the responsibility that comes with it. Same things goes for the women. Ask around to those that have had an abortion. Every decision has consequences. Try to make decisions as you go through life you can feel good about, or at least say you followed through.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 03 2017, @10:06PM (3 children)
You're thinking second-wave feminists. Third-wave feminists threw equality right the fuck out the window and want privilege instead.
Anyone who disagrees, I suggest you attempt an experiment. You know, obtain empirical evidence on whether I'm correct or incorrect. Science, bitches. Suggest to a third-wave feminist that diversity hires in STEM be done away with in favor of a blind job application process done without ever knowing the race or gender of the person being hired. If they get pissed off, I'm right. If they don't, I'm wrong.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by i286NiNJA on Friday November 03 2017, @11:17PM (2 children)
https://pmc.gov.au/resource-centre/domestic-policy/going-blind-see-more-clearly-unconscious-bias-australian-public-services-shortlisting-processes [pmc.gov.au]
Actually blind hiring results in LESS women getting selected than hiring with names attached. There were some similar studies by other universities and they all indicated the same thing: A female name on your resume is an advantage.
As a side note.. I don't remember if it was this study or another one but having a black sound name and a prestigious college on your resume produced results similar to a white sounding name from a middle of the road state school.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 03 2017, @11:41PM
Yep, which means they're less qualified overall and should not have equal representation in the field.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Saturday November 04 2017, @01:06AM
They says in the abstract that it can frustrate diversity effort. I guess being proved wrong by cold hard fact is frustrating to some, when it should be an humbling opportunity to get a better understanding of a situation
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday November 03 2017, @10:30PM (3 children)
When can men opt out of a pregnancy?
Men never had that disadvantage to begin with, so it's irrelevant.
However, I will add that there does seem to be a lack of research into male contraception. There is a very promising option being tested in India (and developed there I think) where they inject some material in the seminal ducts, and it's supposedly extremely safe and reliable, but also importantly completely and easily reversible with an injection of baking soda solution (IIRC). It seems like this kind of thing hasn't been researched or tested here in the US, probably because it's too cheap, and would harm pharma profits for the expensive female contraception methods and the very expensive vasectomy procedures (which aren't that reliably reversed), and there's a conspiracy theory that elements of our society don't want men to be able to avoid accidentally impregnating women so easily and cheaply. So, whichever causes you believe, it's still probably men's fault, because men overwhelmingly dominate the boards and executive positions at pharma corporations, and also high-up government positions (where they'd be able to influence the FDA to not approve this).
When will women get comparable sentences for crimes committed?
This one is men's fault: most judges are male. Also, I've never heard this allegation, so citation needed. Women don't get put in jail as much because they don't commit as many crimes, especially violent ones. The main disparity I've heard of in sentencing is race-based, not gender-based: black people really get the shaft in sentencing. This is probably due to racism, combined with this country's stupid use of juries for this kind of thing.
When will divorce become more equitable?
This one is infamous, but again it's all men's fault: most judges are male, and the whole thing comes from the old-fashioned patriarchal idea that the woman is almost always the one who the kid should stay with.
When can the men get on the life raft alongside the women and children?
Is this still a thing? As in, actually enforced? And when was the last time any significant-sized passenger ship needed to use life rafts anyway?
When will women (even hardcore feminists) pay for first dates?
Now this one is really annoying, but it is changing. I've had women insist on paying for first dates, or on splitting the tab.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday November 03 2017, @11:58PM (1 child)
Really, irrelevant? Tell that to every guy who has to pay for child support for a kid they never wanted or had the child they fathered aborted against their wishes. The choice to end a pregnancy has a profound effect on at least three lives.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:34AM
If you don't want your kid aborted, then only have sex with a woman who agrees beforehand to have your kid. Otherwise, it's not your call, since it's not your body being used as an incubator. Funny how you expect someone else to do all the work and suffering for something you want, and you don't want to contribute anything. If you did, you would have married her first.
As for child support, get the snip if you're worried about that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @01:38AM
That's irrelevant, since he's only talking about cases where women do go to jail or prison. He's saying that their sentences are shorter on average when compared to men who committed a similar crime, I believe. I don't know if that is true but what you said isn't evidence against it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @03:45AM
Don't forget:
-- getting out of traffic tickets by acting vulnerable
-- getting better tips as a wait person
-- getting away with saying "nice bottoms, hon" to another woman without it being "abuse" (actual thing that happened to my teenage daughter while we were on a walk)
-- the list goes on and on and on. it's folly to pretend it's not there. We need to find a balance point that also somehow allows for individuality.