We know that women students and staff remain underrepresented in Higher Education STEM disciplines. Even in subjects where equivalent numbers of men and women participate, however, many women are still disadvantaged by everyday sexism. Our recent research found that women who study STEM subjects at undergraduate level in England were up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism. The main perpetrators of this sexism were not university staff, however, but were men STEM degree students.
Or maybe “the patriarchy is the problem, lets ignore the fact women on average choose caring professions over STEM professions”.
Why do women choose caring professions over STEM professions?
Assuming you’re being genuine and not rhetorically trying to present a ‘gotcha’, I’ll answer the question.
https://ilostat.ilo.org/these-occupations-are-dominated-by-women/ You’ll notice women have the advantage of being able to choose professions which don’t end their lives or break their bodies and minds prematurely.
Here you’ll see an article (with corresponding associated research) that goes into the extreme biases surrounding this discussion, especially with individuals pretending to ‘know’ or ‘understand’ the core of the issue without engaging in the realities that there is a fundamental difference between the sexes. This doesn’t have anything to do with the individual and what the individual chooses to do, it has to do with the average and what the statistics say about that. Statistics cannot be applied to an individual and an individuals views and decisions cannot be applied to the statistics. (rather, should not since incompetent malcontents always will try)
The vast majority of ‘evidence’ that states that these issues in the choices women make are discriminatory or pay based are entirely corollary and not directly evidence based. (I.e. the subject matter is not directly evidenced, and only related data is used to infer a conclusion but not actually determine a conclusion based on clear evidence and research).
Females have the inherent ability to empathize and assist others and males inherently do not, on an average basis, not on an individual basis. (Men can be empathetic but not ALL men are able to be empathetic while most women can be empathetic not ALL women can be empathetic, as a direct example with evidence) https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2019/04/05/reason-women-dont-enter-stem-professions-revealed
Activists like to pretend it’s discrimination and sexism that prevents women from pursuing careers in STEM but the reality is, what few women actually want to get into STEM are the ones who suffer the discrimination therein, and that impacts THAT SPECIFIC group of women, not ALL women.
Again, this is an issue that comes down to small group data being used as an example of ‘why’ for the whole group without actually being the reason why, simply a useful point of data which people can abuse for their own agendas. The same thing assholes do when they have a negative reaction with someone of a different race and then they say “all X people are like this”.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-global-educational-gender-equality-paradox-the-more-gender-equality-in-a-country-the-fewer-women-in-stem/
Research:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719?journalCode=pssa
https://phys.org/news/2015-01-explanation-gender-gaps-academia.html
https://sci-hub.se/10.1037/a0017364
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
https://www.aaas.org/news/journals-and-funders-confront-implicit-bias-peer-review
https://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1240031/FULLTEXT01.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Gender_pay_gap_statistics
https://www.di.se/digital/bolag-grundade-av-kvinnor-far-1-procent-av-riskkapitalet/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02645505231221240
https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12912-023-01267-z
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09636625211002375?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.2
Articles:
https://www.aaas.org/news/journals-and-funders-confront-implicit-bias-peer-review
Also, regarding “the patriarchy”, anyone making that claim these days when the military industrial complex is almost entirely run by women are wholly disingenuous and should be completely barred from the discussion until they educate themselves on the reality around them.
Per example:
I asked Why do women choose caring professions over STEM professions?
You mostly link to articles saying that women choose not to enter STEM, but they don’t say why.
without engaging in the realities that there is a fundamental difference between the sexes.
What are these fundamental differences between the sexes?
Females have the inherent ability to empathize and assist others and males inherently do not, on an average basis, not on an individual basis.
Off-topic, but why didn’t you provide evidence to that claim? You provided a link, but it wasn’t relevant.
what few women actually want to get into STEM are the ones who suffer the discrimination therein, and that impacts THAT SPECIFIC group of women, not ALL women.
I agree! Women do face sexism in STEM fields!
So how do we end that disproportionate sexism, which would logically be a huge reason women are choosing not to enter those fields?
The least you could do is read the research links provided in both the articles and the references provided before pretending like I didn’t provide direct referential material to every point I made.
