Feminism

[MadImmortalMan]

The thing is that they are not intersted as this interest is not awoken in them during early education which relies on stereotypical gender roles. It's the same reason why people from poor backgrounds are less likely to enjoy classical music.

Yeah, I would change those things. I would do everything up to and not including coercion.

[merithyn]

The thing is that they are not intersted as this interest is not awoken in them during early education which relies on stereotypical gender roles. It's the same reason why people from poor backgrounds are less likely to enjoy classical music.

Oh, I don't know about that. Statistics show girls are better (grades-wise) than boys up until middle school. At that point, girls' scores drop drastically. (Interestingly, boys' don't generally go up.) This is the age where it matters more what your peers think than adults. It's not that girls aren't interested or aren't exposed. I think it's more that those who show an interest are mocked or otherwise made pariah (or think they would be).

[The Minsky Moment]

It's actually that plus the fact that women tend to choose more expert specializations (labour, antitrust, environmental etc) rather than more adversarial ones (M&A, litigation) and the latter are better rewarded.

This is anecdotal but in my  litigation/office group, the split is 1/3 women at the partner level and 50-50 at the associate level.
I'd like to think part of that is that my firm is better than average on this but it also reflects the emerging reality of distribution of talent in the marketplace.

[Valmy]

The early to mid teens is where mathematical ability is most easily developed. And I would guess that early to mid teen girls are one of the least likely groups to defy their peers.

I have to say Max I have not noticed this cultural difference in gender ratios in my engineering department.  Sure there are East Asian and South Asian women but not in any greater ratios than among the locals.  And we are EE which is not that much different than CS.

[crazy canuck]

It's actually that plus the fact that women tend to choose more expert specializations (labour, antitrust, environmental etc) rather than more adversarial ones (M&A, litigation) and the latter are better rewarded.

This is anecdotal but in my  litigation/office group, the split is 1/3 women at the partner level and 50-50 at the associate level.
I'd like to think part of that is that my firm is better than average on this but it also reflects the emerging reality of distribution of talent in the marketplace.

Yeah, when I go to court I see a pretty even distribution of female and male litigators.

[merithyn]

I have to say Max I have not noticed this cultural difference in gender ratios in my engineering department.  Sure there are East Asian and South Asian women but not in any greater ratios than among the locals.  And we are EE which is not that much different than CS.

Is the disparity between genders as obvious there as it is here?

I also wonder if that's because UIUC, as one of the top five engineering universities in the country, has a higher percentage of international students in general, too. Max's class was roughly half white, half others.

[Valmy]

Oh, I don't know about that. Statistics show girls are better (grades-wise) than boys up until middle school. At that point, girls' scores drop drastically. (Interestingly, boys' don't generally go up.) This is the age where it matters more what your peers think than adults. It's not that girls aren't interested or aren't exposed. I think it's more that those who show an interest are mocked or otherwise made pariah (or think they would be).

Well puberty is hard it could be any number of things.  I know it was awhile since I was a kid but I do not recall it being less cool for a girl to be smart than a boy.  The smart boys certainly got crap for being nerds.  But to be fair I was not a girl so it could have been hard indeed.  I will ask around.

[merithyn]

Well puberty is hard it could be any number of things.  I know it was awhile since I was a kid but I do not recall it being less cool for a girl to be smart than a boy.  The smart boys certainly got crap for being nerds.

You wouldn't have noticed. The pressure would come from other girls, not from the boys. Though, I do remember at least one fist fight that I got into in sixth grade with a boy who punched me for beating him on some test or something. (No idea what it was in; I did better than him in everything, and he hated it.)

[DGuller]

The thing is that they are not intersted as this interest is not awoken in them during early education which relies on stereotypical gender roles. It's the same reason why people from poor backgrounds are less likely to enjoy classical music.

Oh, I don't know about that. Statistics show girls are better (grades-wise) than boys up until middle school. At that point, girls' scores drop drastically. (Interestingly, boys' don't generally go up.) This is the age where it matters more what your peers think than adults. It's not that girls aren't interested or aren't exposed. I think it's more that those who show an interest are mocked or otherwise made pariah (or think they would be).

The one problem I always had with that theory is that it seems to be so disconnected from reality, at least the kind of reality I experienced.  Are girls after a certain age really ostracized for doing well in school?  If anything, in my experience, it was much harder for a boy to be cool and good in school at the same time.  In my experience, it was quite easy for girls to do well in school without coming off as a nerd.

[Valmy]

You wouldn't have noticed. The pressure would come from other girls, not from the boys. Though, I do remember at least one fist fight that I got into in sixth grade with a boy who punched me for beating him on some test or something. (No idea what it was in; I did better than him in everything, and he hated it.)

Ah yeah.  Just jealousy.

[derspiess]

Can it not just be that female and male minds are just wired differently?

[Valmy]

I have to say Max I have not noticed this cultural difference in gender ratios in my engineering department.  Sure there are East Asian and South Asian women but not in any greater ratios than among the locals.  And we are EE which is not that much different than CS.

Is the disparity between genders as obvious there as it is here?

I also wonder if that's because UIUC, as one of the top five engineering universities in the country, has a higher percentage of international students in general, too. Max's class was roughly half white, half others.

UT has the largest number of international students of any University in the US, easily half of every class is foreigners.  My lab group last semester was me, a Russian, and an Indian.  Yeah there is a big desparity but there.  In my current class there are about 50 students, roughly split 50-50 between Americans and Foreigners and there are three white women and three Indian women.

[Valmy]

Can it not just be that female and male minds are just wired differently?

Well there are some physical differences but what exactly that means we do not know yet.  I suspect in the future we will understand this better.

[MadImmortalMan]

Can it not just be that female and male minds are just wired differently?

Well yeah. But it doesn't really help on a macro level when it comes to making an effort to create equal opportunity. That's another problem with trying to measure the results of these things.

[Admiral Yi]

Okay. Here's an article that I came across earlier. It helps support my assertion.

The annual WEF report grades countries on five metrics to measure the degree of gender equality or inequality: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Countries are scored between 0.0 for most unequal, meaning that women have zero access, or 1.0 for fully equal.

The 2012 report ranks the U.S. 22nd in the world. The only non-Western nations that rank higher than the U.S., meaning their societies are more equal for women, are South Africa, Cuba, Lesotho, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. American society has been catching up to its historical leaders, as this chart of WEF gender equality scores across Western Europe since 2006 shows.

I'm not sure this article supports your argument as convincingly as you seem to believe.

Economic participation can be lower as a result of systemic discrimination, or it can be a choice.

I've already pointed out that in certain areas of educational attainment women outperform men in the US.  That hardly supports your assertion.

Health and survival can again mean one of two things--lack of basic prenatal and postnatal care and contraceptives, or stupid behavior.  Another one that doesn't support your argument.

That leaves "economic opportunity" and "political empowerment."  Now it's theoretically possible that the wizards who wrote this report did in fact try to analyze levels of opportunity qua opportunity and empowerment qua empowerment, but I'd be happy to bet money that they just looked at outcome data: things like the ratio of female to male CEOs and the ratio of female to male legislators and heads of government.

So, stripped of the verbiage, your support reduces to proving inequality of opportunity through unequal outcomes.