Thursday, November 14, 2013

Facts Feminists Lie About

If you do a search for "women in science scholarships" you will get some immediate hits. If you do a search for "men in science scholarships" you'll find nothing that you are looking for. 



This is despite the fact that women in science have outnumbered men in science since 1982. Yeah, you read that correctly. Since 1982 women have outnumbered men in science. You wouldn't know that if you were only listening to feminist rhetoric.

Though to be fair, that is in general, cumulative across all science. Only 18% of computer science graduates were women in 2009 (the latest date that I have statistics for). 

Probably no one is aware that women dominate such fields as psychology (77%), anthropology (70%), and sociology (70%). Even among those who are aware they never refers to this as a crisis for men.

Another interesting thing that comes to light is the fact that the scientific fields where women dominate tend to be quite light as far as math is concerned and fields where men dominate are quite math intensive.

To me, this indicates one of two things (or both). First, perhaps spread out over the population, women just don't enjoy math intensive subjects like math, physics, and engineering. Research would tend to support this in that women typically (again, over populations) prefer to be social and interact with people. Math, physics, and engineering are no where near as social of fields as say psychology.

The second thing it might indicate is that girls are trailing behind boys in math at an early age and they never learn to love that particular field of problem solving. The research does NOT support this. Girls tend to do better in math than boys all through school, up to high school, and perhaps even in college until about Calculus then the numbers begin to shift. 

This is not to say that women can't do math, just that they don't find it interesting. I've aced every psychology class that I've taken, but I'm far more interested in making and breaking software so that gets the lion's share of my time. I would imagine the same could be said for women who like science, but not mathy science, and not solitary science. So they are drawn toward social, relatively math-light fields. 

Et voila, you have women dominating psychology, anthropology, and sociology. ( Please note, I'm not implying any value judgement here regarding these choices, just attempting to point out the reality of things.)

With that said, I do want to stress that I think anyone should have the opportunity to do whatever is they truly want to do AS LONG AS they put in the requisite work. No line jumping, no special treatment, and certainly no ostracism. At the same time, if you are a man going in to a woman dominated field, you should expect the predominant culture to be somewhat feminine. Similarly, if you are a female going into a male dominated field, you should expect the culture to be somewhat masculine.

This is problematic for men, however, because masculinity is currently vilified in our overall culture. Misandry is cool. Chrome doesn't even recognize the proper spelling of misandry, but it certainly recognizes misogyny. There is a not so subtle war against men and boys in this country and it's time that people become aware of that.

This level playing field is not what we see however.  We have a push for more women in science even though the number of women in science is growing at a faster rate than the number of men in science.


The red line on the left is the trend line for women, the one on the right is for men.  Notice the women's trend line shows a greater increase from 2000 to 2009.

But What do the Feminists Say?

Joan Williams, gushing love of a NYTimes commissioned article, over at the Huffington Post said this:
Twenty years of work by myself and Mary Ann Mason confirms Pollack's worry that things don't look good for women in science.

Based on the numbers that I've shown, does that seem like a legitimate comment?  Absolutely not.  But, she didn't bother to point this out.  You are welcome to draw your own conclusions about her character and motivation.

Rather than focusing on science as a whole (where women are dominating, at least as far as matriculation rates are concerned... I'll do some research on employment statistics next time), she focused on those math intensive areas that women just don't seem to be drawn to in college.  Granted, if fewer women enter these fields in college, it seems obvious that there would be fewer women employed in these fields.

Is there any mention of that?

No.  Instead, she goes on and on... and on about about various kinds of bias that were uncovered during some research.  I have the article and will report back on that soon.

To wrap this up at an unreasonable length, ponder the implications of the bias (once subtle if you weren't aware of the bigger picture, but now, hopefully, not-so-subtle).  Even though women are clearly outnumbering men in science degrees earned, feminist writers will find a way to spin this.

In the sake of clarity, she is talking about employment and I am talking about degrees earned.  Though there is a relationship there, I will soon post information regarding employment statistics as well.

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