Why half the scientists in some eastern European countries are women
Science is still a man's world. Since 1903, when Marie Curie first won the Nobel Prize, almost 600 blokes but only 19 women have taken home the coveted award in physics, chemistry or medicine. In the realms of more ordinary talent, just 28% of the world's researchers are women. Even in the EU, where the sexes are more equal than in other parts of the world, a mere two-fifths of scientists and engineers are women. In Germany and Finland, it is less than one in three.
Eastern Europe bucks the global trend, according to a recent report from Leiden University in the Netherlands. In Lithuania, 57% of scientists and engineers are women. Bulgaria and Latvia follow close behind, at 52%. Universities in Poland and Serbia were ranked among the best in the world for sexual equality in research publications. South-east Europe is roughly at parity: 49% of scientific researchers in the region are women. Some of this is a legacy of Soviet times, when communist regimes pressed both men and women into scientific careers and did not always give them a choice about it. The coercion has gone, but the habit of women working in labs has remained.
"Coercion" of women and even men into science. Is it good or bad? Note that it created a generational habit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fraxinus-tree on Wednesday September 07 2022, @08:27AM (19 children)
I am an eastern-European male. My wife (now ex-, but it doesn't matter) became a scientist. I didn't. The unfortunate fact is, she didn't want to be a scientist. It was me dreaming for a scientific career.
There is a lot to say about eastern-European women being more attractive (not overall beautiful, but attractive), employed (and even over-employed), etc, etc... but it all boils down to the economy and the society being fscked up. And this is bad for everyone, INCLUDING women and including most of women scientists.
You don't need to take my word. Just compare the scientific output (publications and related metrics - citations, impact factors, etc...) for eastern European scientific institutions and scientists to their western counterparts.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2022, @10:16AM (14 children)
Blame it on "it's bad, but as good as it gets; we'll manage somehow" mentality. Internalized for decades living under communism (authoritarian mismanagement) then socially perpetuated after.
Which results in:
- advantage - adaptability and resilience
- disadvantage - opportunism (sliding easily into corruption)
- disadvantage - "why look for better when we'll manage it somehow anyway?"
- disadvantage - "if I failed, is not/rarely my fault (and, since it happened because of others, I can do nothing to make it better next time)". Even your "boils down to the economy and the society being fscked up" falls into this category.
Ask me how I know.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fraxinus-tree on Wednesday September 07 2022, @10:37AM
Adaptability - not really, for the majority. Resillence - yes, especially if mistaken for tolerance to discomfort. The rest is true. Communism is almost invariably bad. ...ask me how I know.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 07 2022, @12:01PM (12 children)
Everyone has it. Consider this question: where do you see yourself in a thousand years? My take is some day that question will have a non-trivial answer. But it'll cause significant psychological pain to hope to be in a generation that would be given the chance to answer that question so.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday September 07 2022, @01:23PM (4 children)
Where do you see the pain coming from? I'm not seeing it, unless you're talking a really malignant form of hope.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Wednesday September 07 2022, @10:51PM (3 children)
Multiple sources - for example, consider that Earth is a incredibly minute part of the observable universe which in turn might be part of an infinite universe. Same goes for time our lifespan is a small part of the whole thing. We see just some ridiculously small - with lots of zeros - part of the universe. Living longer would help us see and learn more about this universe. Just living to a thousand would lop a zero off this scale.
Also, you get to spend more time with your friends and family - less loneliness possible; you have more time to get your life together - seems to me we kick the bucket about the time we start figuring stuff out; and get a better perspective on the long term issues that our world has.
The hardest part will be being part of a generation that is almost there, can almost taste that better, longer life, but falling short.
Indeed. But that is the point of "it's bad, but as good as it gets; we'll manage somehow" mentality. One of the classic coping mechanisms is simply to not see the problems that you can't do anything about.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday September 08 2022, @03:20AM (2 children)
If there's one thing that you can say of every point in history, and of the future, it's that "For now, it's good as it gets; we'll manage somehow"
No matter how godlike we may become in the future there will always be greater heights to strive for. Greater transformations just out of reach. You can either wallow in self-pity that we're not there yet - in which case you'll wallow forever. Or you can rejoice at the fact that in most respects we're currently better off than pretty much everyone in our species history.
Or perhaps there won't be - perhaps eventually we'll reach the point where everything truly is as good as it can get. That would be truly tragic - what is left to do when there's nothing left to strive for? When nothing you do can improve things? That tends to lead to a deep and abiding despair when it happens to people today.
And that's one of the fundamental truths that people tend to forget: We quickly habituate to any change in circumstances - you could win the lottery or lose a limb tomorrow, and within a year or two you'd almost certainly be back to being about as happy as you are today.
At any rate we're not remotely ready for immortality - we've got some really serious logistical problems to solve before rapidly increasing the population growth rate. I suppose if people knew they'd personally have to face the consequences it might motivate them - but most of the people causing the problem are the very wealthy and powerful - and the truth is they almost certainly *won't* face anything worse than minor inconveniences in the face of large opportunities.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @11:24AM (1 child)
Try a colectomy resulting in a colostomy bag and we'll sit two years later to compare happiness levels before and after, deal?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 09 2022, @10:07PM
You really think that's worse than becoming a multiple amputee?
Sure, it may break your spirit, but if it doesn't then within a couple years you'll be back to being as (un-)happy as ever. Multiple studies have shown that the only way to change your level of happiness long term is to actually practice being happy (or miserable). The things that happen outside your head have very little impact.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @06:59AM (6 children)
Yeah, right.
khallow: I can't live 1000y and that's baaaaad, man
east-european: (last direct, albeit anecdotal, experience) I get to waste 3h of my 70y-average life time just to take and activate a damn'd, already issued, card from the bank office. And things like that abound in everyday life.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 08 2022, @10:12AM (5 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @11:14AM (4 children)
Suuuure it does, khallow. The waste of individual lives will always pale in comparison with the higher purposes of the economy (of the frontier-freedom no-restrictions type, if possible) and the bright destiny of the humanity (as consumers).
Except probably for those whose life span is mostly made of mundane wasted time on everyday basis. But then again, who give a fuck about those losers, the inability of some humans [soylentnews.org] to reach their cosmic-being destiny is the real tragedy here.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 08 2022, @11:41AM (3 children)
Indeed - presently I speak of almost 8 billion individual lives and at best centuries of waste per life.
But are you ever going to argue whatever you were trying to say rather than just making my points for me? I must admit that easy mode argument is fine, but I sense you posted for a reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @12:00PM (2 children)
Indeed, khallow, never let the bitter reality stop your heroic dreams.
A word of warning though, the bed you're dreaming in? It's still restricted by the reality - watch out not to fall out of it and wake up with bruises, an unpleasant experience I'm told.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 09 2022, @02:34AM (1 child)
These are classic symptoms of psychological coping: mocking uncomfortable viewpoints, skewed perspective, and sour grapes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2022, @01:56AM
I am talking about things that are already happening and they are surely happening to all of the "Many Women Scientists in Eastern Europe" - because it's happening to everyone there, on an everyday basis - thet get to waste 20-30% of your lifetime in just managing something bad, something that the westernized society optimized decades ago. (If you like fiction so much, have it like this: who knows, it may be happening to one who would have had a breakthrough in DNA repair if only the everyday life in her society won't be so wasteful - the one that you dream of as a mean to grow the usual human lifespan - so that discovering the techniques will be delayed by centuries).
You are talking in the context of a highly hypothetical scenario which, in the present, its not even on the map of the mainstream research.
I'm not mocking you, it's just a friendly warning. Watch out for the limits of your bed, khallow, the appeal to fiction [rationalwiki.org] does not a sound argument make.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday September 08 2022, @01:35AM (1 child)
Perhaps you should have appreciated your wife more and admit it was you who fucked up.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Thursday September 08 2022, @01:26PM
Maybe. We would have divorced anyway.
What I tried to explain is that it is not the existence, but the lack of opportunities that drives most of these women into science. Some kind of science.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday September 10 2022, @02:01PM (1 child)
I'm puzzled.
How does the economy and the society being fscked up lead to eastern-European women being more attractive?
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Saturday September 10 2022, @10:48PM
Let's say that the attractiveness becomes an important social elevator.
(Score: -1, Spam) by ToryJohn on Wednesday September 07 2022, @09:22AM (1 child)
Could it be, that there is something about the Teutonic male that makes it prone to Dunning-Kroegerism, White Supremacy, and not being very good at science, so that they are forced, nay, compelled, to form an old-boys club, and exclude females? There is another possible explanation, but that is a different kind of old boys club, more in line with Oaf Keeplers and Prong Boys.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2022, @10:02AM
Not the teutons, just the anglo-saxon of North American upbringing, especially those of "righteous-vengeance kind of protestant" extraction. Even the rest of anglo-saxons are, meh, decent by comparison.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2022, @03:47PM (1 child)
Over here in the West we are firmly in the Great Man camp of doing science. Well, not science, "science". Performative art that gives the appearance of science led by a strong male lead. The lead barks impressive sounding orders to quivering inferiors who scuttle around ineptly making the lead, by comparison, look heroic. Nobody does anything else - just barking and scuttling. Plus or minus a few mental breakdowns of the honest few who can't quite believe the charade is really happening. Let me unburden them: Yes, yes it is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2022, @04:13PM
Maybe that model works for those people in that situation? I'm not saying it's ideal nor how I would do things.
More and more, especially in various Internet blogs, forums, discussion groups, tweeter, etc., there's a growing drone of there being only one right way to do things; one absolutely correct solution. Knock it off, open your minds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @06:37AM
It's a rule that all scientists in Eastern Europe must have a beard, or at the very least a luxuriant mustachio.