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E-PrinceBeing a woman hasn’t been easy for Emily Carter.
The mechanical and aerospace engineering professor persistently experienced the effects of gender bias early in her professional life, “up until the point at which I was well-known enough [in my ...
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can we PLEASE stop with these gender articles, for the love of god...
"Stereotype threat" may be legit, but even assuming equal ability you still need to account for differences in interest and drive before you cry discrimination. By differences in drive I mean that you might think males have a greater desire to acquire high status in a field, and thus might be more determined to succeed.
Also, the internal report of someone like Carter (i.e. that she felt women were viewed as suspect) is not good evidence for claims about how things actually were.
"society has not figured out how to help women have wife equivalents". While this statement is bizarre on a number of levels, what stands out is the implication that "society", who- or whatever that might be, should provide benefits for women that it doesn't provide for men contradicts the spirit of equal opportunity that Carter et al. profess.
Or is it that she hopes for an equal outcome, and that people should be treated differently based on their innate characteristics so that the outcome looks "equal" to Carter?
Emily Carter's remarks are on the money. As a working (male) scientist I have noticed that women's ideas are often subjected to more scrutiny than men's. This is not to say that science is overtly sexist, nor is it to say that there hasn't been progress. But to assert that we have attained full gender equity and should discuss other matters, as '12 seems to do, is just plain wrong.
In terms of ability and "drive" I see no difference between men and women in the undergraduate courses that I teach.
To the young women who aspire to careers in science and engineering, I say hang in there. The country needs you. To the men, I say think carefully about your own attitudes and keep an open mind. The country needs you too.
It seems like the fact that faculty/post-doctoral hiring committees are encouraged to give women a leg up (or value the diversity brought to science and engineering departments by having so-called female styles of thought represented, or pick the woman all else being roughly equal, whatever you want to call it) only makes this problem of female competence being questioned worse.
How can you say you're going to apply different standards while hiring based on plumbing, then turn on a dime and insist that the different types of people you pick are identically qualified?
If women aren't going into the sciences because they need a wife-equivalent, why are they going into law and medicine, previously male-dominated fields, in record numbers? About 50% of law and med school graduates are female. Why do STEM graduates need wife-equivalents more than doctors and lawyers?
Because, Artemis, we can't admit that there are any differences between men and women! All differences in outcomes must be the result of nasty patriarchal discrimination.
Women in science have at least one advantage: on the dating market. Male nerds are viewed as pathetic, female nerds are viewed as cute.
Men can stroke their beards pensively as they wrestle with intellectual puzzles. Women are not as good at wrestling.
dont we get one of these articles every semester?
@D Discrimination in hiring is when there are identically qualified candidates, and routinely the women and other underrepresented minorities are passed over for white men with similar qualifications. This happens more than you would think.
@Artemis because a great many people in STEM don't make as much money as doctors and lawyers. So when it comes to childcare and homemaking, we can't hire people to help us out as easily. I use to tell my graduate mentor all the time that while he had a wife to do laundry and grocery shopping, I had to do those things for myself.