Feminism Thread

[archibaldcrane]

Everyone wants to be a feminist but nobody wants to do the work. All you want to do is whine and complain because it's easy and makes you feel good - no research, no ACTUAL data on problems keeping women outside of science other than mah feelings. It's the least scientific way to go about things, which is ironic

Start here I guess? It's a pretty well researched field. Feminists want to eliminate the explicit and implicit sexism that clearly exists in education and the workplace. This shirt is a tiny example at an extremely visible cutting edge international event.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/19/women

Among the panel's findings:

• A series of cognitive and other studies "have not found any significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that can account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty and scientific leadership positions in these fields."
• Although women fall out of academic science at nearly every stage of the pipeline, women are underrepresented on faculties even in fields in which they have reached relative parity. They make up only 15.4 percent of full professors in the social and behavioral sciences and 14.8 percent in the life sciences, despite having earned more than 30 percent and 20 percent of the doctorates in those fields, respectively, over more than 30 years.
• Women are "very likely" to face discrimination -- sometimes deliberately but often inadvertently -- in "every field of science and engineering. (Minority women, the panel notes throughout the report, often face a double whammy.) The discrimination results from a combination of built-in biases that make them less likely to hire a woman than a man with identical accomplishments, of evaluation criteria that "contain arbitrary and subjective components that disadvantage women." For instance, "characteristics that are often selected for and believed ... to relate to scientific creativity -- namely assertiveness and single-mindedness --" are both given greater weight in hiring and promotion than traits such as flexibility, diplomacy and curiosity, and "stereotyped as socially unacceptable traits for women."

"The United States can no longer afford the underperformance of our academic institutions in attracting the best and brightest minds to the science and engineering enterprise," the panel says in its report. "Nor can it afford to devalue the contributions of some members of that workforce through gender inequalities and discrimination."
The committee asks a wide range of players in and around higher education to do their part to in its "large scale and interdependent" set of recommendations. It asks:

• Trustees and presidents to "provide clear leadership in changing the culture and structure of their institutions to recruit, retain and promote women," including setting goals for hiring and promotion requiring "evidence of a fair, broad and aggressive search before approving appointments," and holding departments "accountable for the equity of their search process and outcomes."
• Deans, department chairs and tenured faculty to undertake a full discussion of "climate issues," and to adopt policies that "take into account the flexibility that faculty need across the life course and do not sacrifice quality in the process of meeting rigid timelines."
• Higher education groups to "consider forming an inter-institution monitoring organization" that would set norms, collect data, and track compliance and accountability in hiring.
• Scholarly societies to adopt guidelines aimed at ensuring reasonable representation of women on journal editorial boards and among invited speakers at their events.
• Federal agencies and foundations to ensure that their standards and rules "support the full participation of women and do not reinforce a culture that fundamentally discriminates" against them.
• Congress to ensure adequate enforcement of antidiscrimination laws.

"The fact that women are capable of contributing to the nation's scientific and engineering enterprise but are impeded in doing so because of gender and racial/ethnic bias and outmoded 'rules' governing academic success is deeply troubling and embarrassing," the report concludes. "It is also a call to action."

[archibaldcrane]

Ignore the question. Nice

It's not an honest question. It's a troll question. Engaging in your side-tracking ridiculousness is the exact direction you want this conversation to go - to absurdity, because you have no interest in the topic other than to frustrate those who want things to improve.

[Rhinox]

It's not an honest question. It's a troll question. Engaging in your side-tracking ridiculousness is the exact direction you want this conversation to go - to absurdity, because you have no interest in the topic other than to frustrate those who want things to improve.

Carry on

What do you think keeps women out of tech?

[Rhinox]

You're doing the exact thing you're accusing me of doing. Only I'm not setting up bait for a giant next post complete with links. Cam on

[BaneTheBrawler]

seems relevant

[archibaldcrane]

seems relevant

no it doesn't

[Teryu]

I wanted to post that lol.

[GoggleHead]

^ Why I hate feminism. It has become the evil it once sought to combat.

[archibaldcrane]

lol

[RKenshin]

What do you think keeps women out of tech?

http://m.toysrus.com/skava/static/ca...oryId=13041269
vs.
http://m.toysrus.com/skava/static/ca...oryId=13041262

Probably doesn't help things.

At the same time I feel like this question could be asked about a lot of things, and the answer isn't necessarily as simple as "OBVIOUSLY because the environment is hostile to them!!11!patriarchymisogynistoppression!!1."

What keeps black people out of tech? Or all other minorities save Asians? What keeps men out of teaching? What keeps men out of social services? What keeps Asians out of law enforcement? Why are men becoming underrepresented in graduate schools?

[NynJa]

seems relevant
[IM-G]http://i.imgur.com/KfjGkEr.png[/IMG]

Check mate
Fuck you extremist feminists

[Thunder]

Start here I guess? It's a pretty well researched field. Feminists want to eliminate the explicit and implicit sexism that clearly exists in education and the workplace. This shirt is a tiny example at an extremely visible cutting edge international event.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/19/women

Excellent post! For real

Yeah, it's painfully obvious there aren't enough women representatives in the sciences and it's FACT science takes "all types" in the sense that if we're missing a large amount of potential women in science (we are, it's fact) then we are literally missing out on science contributions T O D A Y

But. How do we go about it? Notice that in your bulleted list nowhere is there "raise awareness through hateful twitter posts" or "condemn those who do not think the way you do, act the way you do, or dress the way you do". This campaign against the shirt is doing the OPPOSITE of helping women go into sciences, right? Can we agree? Seriously, can we agree? This guy, and other scientists/educators, are going to be influenced by this shirt campaign... are they going to be influenced positively by it, or negatively, you think? Hell, many women will see this bullshit, will it influence them positively or negatively about science? Ask yourself, what are you doing by fanning these flames

So, your bulleted list has a bunch of people that can get involved, except for the general public. If we want the general public involved a WAY, WAY better a tactic would be to retweet and popularize positive comments from big-named scientists and get THOSE stories in the media. But they wont do that, because they don't get their fill of hatred by doing that. This is an outlet for people to be angry, nothing more. People getting up in arms about the shirt are doing NOTHING for women in science. Nothing. People getting behind this should feel bad for detracting from what the actual goal should be (getting more women involved in science)

[Priran]

After receiving a ton of backlash from feminists, Time has seemingly canceled its Worst Words 2014 poll and apologized for the mere inclusion of "feminism" as a choice, which was at 52% of all votes among 15 other possibilities right before the poll was taken down and replaced with a static image of the choices.

QED

[Teryu]

Of course it was.

[tyven]

Jeez

[Kibble]

After receiving a ton of backlash from feminists, Time has seemingly canceled its Worst Words 2014 poll and apologized for the mere inclusion of "feminism" as a choice, which was at 52% of all votes among 15 other possibilities right before the poll was taken down and replaced with a static image of the choices.

QED

Not sure why you keep bringing up this TIME poll. It's like you forgot that moot won their most influential poll in 2009.

[Priran]

Not sure why you keep bringing up this TIME poll. It's like you forgot that moot won their most influential poll in 2009.

The apology and retraction wasn't "sorry this poll got hacked and the results are illegitimate" which is what happened to the Influential People poll. The apology is "sorry we even included it", which pretty much goes to show what the sentiment was for voting for it.

[hey]

http://m.toysrus.com/skava/static/ca...oryId=13041269
vs.
http://m.toysrus.com/skava/static/ca...oryId=13041262

Probably doesn't help things.

At the same time I feel like this question could be asked about a lot of things, and the answer isn't necessarily as simple as "OBVIOUSLY because the environment is hostile to them!!11!patriarchymisogynistoppression!!1."

What keeps black people out of tech? Or all other minorities save Asians? What keeps men out of teaching? What keeps men out of social services? What keeps Asians out of law enforcement? Why are men becoming underrepresented in graduate schools?

Because the environment is hostile to them. I think that much is pretty clear. Certainly there may be other factors, but when you start seeing such huge disparities in demographics, i think it's safe to say a big part of it is because they just aren't welcome.

[Teryu]

The problem with that statement is that feminists have different ideas of what a hostile workplace is in relation to an actual hostile workplace.

[RKenshin]

Certainly there may be other factors

My point

As for:

but when you start seeing such huge disparities in demographics, i think it's safe to say a big part of it is because they just aren't welcome.

I'm not familiar with any kind of broad evidence that any of these:

What keeps black people out of tech? Or all other minorities save Asians? What keeps men out of teaching? What keeps men out of social services? What keeps Asians out of law enforcement? Why are men becoming underrepresented in graduate schools?

Are due to "a big part of it being because they just aren't welcome."

The STEM field in particular houses a far more liberal and progressive demographic than most areas.

Which is why when someone asks/examines "why aren't there more black people in tech?" the response isn't usually "because black people aren't welcome" or "because the STEM field is full of racists"... it's more often explained to be an issue with the culture and environment.

But then someone asks the same question about women, and suddenly culture and environment don't matter and it's all really because the STEM field is full of bigotted misogynists? I don't deny that issues exist, or that they aren't a big part in some ways, but there is clear evidence and reasoning to explain at least part of why women don't have as much interest/desire in STEM that has nothing to do with these big-bad-sexist-boogyengineer portrayals.