For years we’ve been seeing women rise through the training ranks of academic science, experiencing fearsome attrition, but we said that men were also being weeded out by grad school and post-doc positions and the harsh competition to land a tenure-track position. And then we noticed that a smaller proportion of women were actually getting those jobs, so we mostly shrugged our shoulders and said, well, it’s a painful grind to get there, so it must be fair (how intolerable it would be if we all suffered unnecessarily, after all), and so the ladies must simply be less capable of handling the rigors of a career in science — said rigors being the same obstacles that the Men of Science created and put in place. We talked about estrogen and “nurturers” as if those were inimical to doing science, instead of irrelevant (although I try to imagine a culture of science that were more nurturing and supportive and cooperative, and can’t help but think that that would be so much better). We try to pretend that hey, these differences in outcomes are purely biological or genetic or hormonal, and gosh, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, maybe we’ll answer the question of how it happens later, if we just throw more men at the analysis.
I think the question has been answered repeatedly. People have written at length about the answer. It seems that every month there’s another piece that summarizes the real source of the problem — the latest, and it’s a good one, is in Marie Claire magazine. The answer, as always, is the same.
Male scientists are the product of a misogynistic culture, and they like to pretend that they’re objective, self-aware participants in that culture, even when they’re oblivious, and see exploitation of women as their due. It’s droit du seigneur for the 21st century. We’re not going to fix it until more men wake up, or, since that’s unlikely, more women crack the ranks of science and slap the men awake.
Or we can just wait for the old male scientists to die off.
You are, once again, making the same simplistic bullshit argument. There is never any nuance in your arguments. Never. There may be lots of problems you can blame on the establishment white male scientists, but the lack of hiring of women faculty is not one of the them. As anyone whoever searched for STEM (in my case, physics) faculty (and I just concluded a search) knows, the problem is the paucity of women applicants. That means, and it should be fucking obvious but you like to stick to dogma rather than data, the problem is upstream, probably in grade school and certainly by middle school. That is where we have a serious issue of girls, for reasons I don’t know but hopefully someone is addressing, being turned off from science and STEM. At the faculty hiring level, this comports more with my experience (many searches) than your assertions.
@1 Bill
You’re flogging a dead horse.
Get a room.
The piece itself has the answer for it:
We need to make sure that clear codes of conduct are set, rules enforced, and mostly importantly of all enforced on everyone with assurance. No superstars getting away with bad behavior over and over again, and no ability of indulgent supervisors to let it continue. Bad behavior needs to be identified and sanctioned as soon as it happens, other you’ll end up with horrifying stuff like that site supervisor who “systematically preyed upon women” at his site.
Maybe I read that sentence wrong, but to me it means that the proportion of men to women trying to get a tenure position is a:b but the proportion of men to women that get tenured is c:d. Proportionally less women than there are in the population actively seeking tenure. Meaning men are being, disproportionate to the population seek tenure, hired at a higher frequency than women.
@1 Bill
the problem is the paucity of women applicants
Drive most of the women out of the field before they get their Ph.Ds and then say there are no women applicants. Not surprising.
Oh, but Mr. Buckner must be right. After all, he is a man, and possibly even a Tenured Professor, and thus doesn’t need evidence or to actually study the issue (or even read the linked article) to know The Truth. We silly females should realize that Mr. Buckner’s truthy Truth trumps our own heavily researched conclusioins or our experiences or those of our sisters.
\sarcasm
Sadly, I am not surprised at about any of the accounts related in the linked article – they sound so similar to what we’ve already been hearing from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the military, and Congress. (I’m also not surprised at Bill’s comment – people like him show up in almost all of these discussions.)
But there is one prominent field we haven’t heard much about: Wall Street. I eagerly await their day of reckoning.
Brett #4,
That is a serious problem, and no doubt causes an additional reduction in the population of women in graduate school as they fall prey to scumbags. (Sadly, I know of actual cases.) But it is on top of the major reduction of girls that occurs earlier. Roughly speaking (and my experience is limited to physics) the number of women graduate students is already way below what you would expect (i.e., ~50%).
Systemic weeding of females in k-12 and undergrad years does not preclude systemic weeding in grad and postgrad environments.
I don’t see an either/or, I see a continuum.
Allison #7,
Oh, and you must have the right to ignore data because it is inconvenient and doesn’t fit your storyline. Here is real data, which I’m sure you will ignore. The percent of PhDs in physics has risen to about 20%. (As of 2015). By 2010 the percentage of women hired on as physics assistant profs was about 22%. (I have a link for that too, but I fear two links will put me in moderation, ask if you want it.) That shows, roughly speaking, that women are being hired in rates at least commensurate with the supply.
So what are you “heavily researched conclusions” that women get hired in, say, physics, at rates below the actual supply of women candidates? I’ll be waiting.
Again, no nuance here. I am not denying sexism in the field, I’m pointing out that the shortage of women faculty is mostly due to girls being steered away from STEM at a young age.
jrkrideau
Again, too simplistic. The are already way more men graduate students. If you mean drive girls out before they reach high school, then I agree with you. Quantitatively speaking, that is the big problem.
@11 Bill
I don’t have the reference but NSF did a study a few years ago looking at students who entered STEM fields as freshmen but didn’t graduate. The data showed that men and women dropped out in roughly equal proportions but women were more likely than men to graduate in another field. Which might suggest that at least among women who make it to university planning on majoring in STEM fields, they aren’t so much driven out of STEM as attracted to other fields.
Of course it doesn’t. Except the data show that women get hired at least (if not higher ) at rates consistent with their pool. If 50% of the physics faculty applicants were women and we only had 20% women hires, then the bulk of the problem would be with old male faculty. But if only 20% of the PhDs go to women, then the problem is upstream. Fix that problem, or at least acknowledge it, rather than just dogmatizing the situation.
Here is the unfortunate mathematical truth–there is no numerical evidence of a bias in stem faculty hirings (at least in physics), because the dominant mathematical effect is in the schools. If you solve that problem–tantamount to reducing the background– then you might see the effect of bias at the university faculty level.
Link fixing:
The link in #11 wasn’t provided correctly. Sorry.
Let me try again.
While I suspect that’s just cynical humor, of course it would not work. The same way that waiting for the slaveowner to die would not free the slaves: the successor would still be the same problem.
@Bill Buckner:
Might I politely ask if you read the article in Marie Claire?
Crip Dyke #16
Of course. And I did. And I don’t dispute the problem of sexism in the academy. Might I ask if you read my comments carefully? Let me put it this way.
If girls were not steered from science at an early age, then then there would be more women faculty (at least hired.) PZ wrote about the smaller proportion of women getting these jobs as if it were an obvious fact, when the data do not support it and suggest the contrary. As for the article, a prediction of the article might be that if we solved the problem of young girls not choosing (read: being discouraged from) STEM (again, I only know about physics) then there would be the “correct” number of women physics faculty which will only (given no change for the better in the culture) cause sexual assault, sexism, harassment to proportionally increase. That might in fact happen. The problem seems merely one of opportunity, not discipline. But my argument stands–women do get faculty positions commensurate (or better) with the pool of women applicants.
Just as we’re seeing improper behaviors and sexual harassment/assault come out in other industries, I’m sure it’ll come out in the STEM field. I went through my own experiences of improper behavior in the computer science field and eventually, I left it, although it was more from being discounted specifically because I was female. I had a professor who told me he was surprised I did so well on an exam because that I was females and females in comp sci just weren’t that smart. I had a co-worker that told me I was too pretty to be smart and tried to weasel out of doing work by claiming I couldn’t understand the tasks he had to do. I still work in technology, but more in a facilitation capacity and most men are surprised that I actually understand the technical details. And I currently work at a company that is filled with nepotism and good ol’ boys. It’s a cycle that started in college (in elementary, middle, and high school I was encouraged in science and math disciplines) and continues to this day, at least from my experience.
I’ll go one step further I will say that we would probably be better off if we were more nurturing supportive and cooperative generally in society as a whole than we are now. We have emphasized competition so much that we have become very lopsided. We seldom recognize the experience society as a we experience. Instead it is us and them, made up of factions that are in competition with all other factions. with in those factions it is competition for supremacy.
the only way to get ahead is to beat the other guy some how.
no one likes a looser!
I too dream of a different way to order society maybe a much older one but I fear not in my life time
uncle frogy
@Bill
Maybe biology doesn’t have the paucity of applicants problem? As a former biology student, women were pretty prominent in class and as professors. Thats just my experience of course.
@logicalcat
It is definitely true that there are more women in biology than physics. And about half the bio PhDs are women. Physics, engineering and computer science are much less successful.
@Bill
I have a shit memory, and I admit that I am bias towards PZ. I think he has mentioned this issue in the past. Recall something about how he is fortunate that he belongs to a field where the disparity is not as wide.
@1 Maybe you can also complain about all the guys who don’t harass women as well.
You can’t blame everything on “upstream” issues when the stream is made up of conscious “water” that can see when it’s flowing into a sewer and can take steps to avoid it. Just because people are jumping ship early doesn’t mean the problem isn’t at the faculty stage.
gijoel,
Fuck you for a gratuitous comment. You must feel so pleased with yourself for dropping a Matt Damon bomb. Awesome contribution.
Colin J,
That would have to be a second order effect. What you are saying, if I understand it, is that grade school and middle school teachers, and often parents as well, who overtly or even subliminally steer girls from physics (in my case)– this is somehow the fault of university faculty? Occam’s razor would suggest it is more likely the result of something wrong with the entire culture and a broken, underfunded (at least in regards to teacher salaries) education system.
Bill Buckner:
No, what I’m saying is that these “girls” aren’t a mindless flow that needs to be guided one way or another. They are living, breathing, thinking human beings (a lot like men, in that respect) who can see for themselves where the STEM path is leading and can choose to look for something less toxic. (Although I have to say: good luck with that.)
For someone who is asking for nuance, you don’t like to think much about the numbers you are presenting. They don’t prove what you think they prove.
#26,
Maybe not, but not because you say so. My claim is that the numbers show that women do get hired into faculty positions in STEM at a rate that is at least consistent with their numbers in terms of PHDs awarded (and from my experience, in applicant pools). While I don’t actually claim to “prove” that–in science we are reluctant to claim proof–I am convinced the numbers are supportive. You musings (sans data) have given me no reason to alter my position. I’m not sure you know what “nuance” means.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Bucker, what the fuck are you doing to change the situation in physics, like active support of young women in elementary, junior high, and high school, much less once they are in college. All I hear is you are doing nothing to change the paradigm.
Put up or shut the fuck up. That is what I understand. What are YOU doing to change things.
Sorry, Buckner, not Bucker. Mea Culpa.
Bill Buckner @27:
A common problem with a lot of folk around here (well, anywhere) who demand a single answer to complicated questions. I note Colin J’s use of “the problem”, as though there can’t be more than one. And Nerd’s demand that your comments somehow require you to do something about the problem (“or shut the fuck up”, no less). Honestly, I don’t know why you bother.
@ chigau (違う), #28
I lol’d.
Rob Grigjanis #31
Bless your heart and have a nice day.
vucodlak #32
:)
I wish it was actually funny.
chigau @33: Already blessed, and the day was nice, but thanks anyway!
しかたがない
I don’t know how it is in other fields, but at least in my area of computer science the problem already starts at the undergrad level.
I agree with the article that there is a lot of sexism going on in Academia but I don’t agree with assuming that it is the primary reason for the lack of representation of women at the faculty level.
@6 “Drive most of the women out of the field before they get their Ph.Ds and then say there are no women applicants. Not surprising.”
Yes, but the problems are at every stage of the pipeline, including after the doctorate. I’ve got mine, and I’m a hot enough property to have universities come sniffing around. But I have no interest because of my experience with PZ’s employer — when their own experts judged that their grad student who was hunting me was a serious and dangerous threat, the university falsified the reports and declared that no problem existed.
I like my work, I’m good at it, I don’t want to die, and job offers are not hard to come by. Why would I consider a position at an institution that, rather than expend a moderate effort to control a problem employee, instead invests in much larger efforts to protect the perpetrators at all costs? Which is what universities do in general?
So looping back to the first comment, with the standard whine of standard bigots who can’t think of, “Women just don’t applYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY,” — well, of course we don’t, when you allow your colleagues and your workplace to be so corrupt and violent that we cannot safely do so. You are the problem, not us.
@12: “The data showed that men and women dropped out in roughly equal proportions but women were more likely than men to graduate in another field. Which might suggest that at least among women who make it to university planning on majoring in STEM fields, they aren’t so much driven out of STEM as attracted to other fields.”
What a bizarre interpretation. I never ran across any female STEM students who changed fields because they simply decided to. I did run into those who fled harassment, stalking, and violence, but managed to triumph when they weren’t actively in danger.
@25: “What you are saying, if I understand it, is that grade school and middle school teachers, and often parents as well, who overtly or even subliminally steer girls from physics (in my case)– this is somehow the fault of university faculty”
Uh, no, the male physicists are plenty repellent on their own. Do you think we haven’t all heard the stories? And experienced our own? Women tell each other these things, you know. And then we pick up our own data points when we work with physicists ourselves. Instead of whining, why not clean house and act like collegial grown-up humans on the job? It’s not hard, and you guys like to claim to be smart.
“I don’t know how it is in other fields, but at least in my area of computer science the problem already starts at the undergrad level.”
I’ve never seen a more concentrated mass of mentally unbalanced seething hate and energetic bigotry than male computer science undergrads.
Well, except when they turn into grad students and decide to commit murder because their penis is sad and angry.