Netherlands - Women in science are missing out on dozens of millions of euros

[sb4]

Like 1000x, @Alvin!

It was barely a century ago when people believed that if you overeducated women, they would not be able to cope and could easily descend into madness.

It sounds ridiculous now, doesn't it? Because we know better. But the claims made here by @sb4 will seem just as ridiculous to the next generation. And of course to many in the present generation who bother to reflect on it all.

But to me, the opposite is true. I think the next generation will see the arguments on this thread are not correct.

I do not understand why what I am saying is being so agressively attacked.

Women and men are different, this is a good thing. This is no way an attack on women. Women are on average better at empathy, agreeableness, etc. Men at other things. It makes sense to factor these things in when looking at diferences between genders.

I am not saying that women shouldn't do X or they should stay at home. I'm saying the opposite. Whoever is the best should get the job, regardless of race or gender. Just that all jobs will never be 50/50.

 

[Valentijn]

... yet biological conditioning is also a thing.

Is it? Do explain.

A woman wants somebody that has the social / physical power to protect her whilst she is raising kids, the person that raises the highest is more desirable because this indicates he has better genes.

Uh, no. Power and wealth are still based primarily upon (financial) inheritance, not supposedly superior genes. And until very recently, that was pretty much 100% based upon the family someone was born to. The only connection between genes and power is some interesting genetic diseases that were the result of too much inbreeding among royalty.

This is why babies with highher T look at objects more instead of faces.

Could you cite the studies making this claim? My suspicion is that they're methodological shite.

If the other army has just men, then there women are saved. Next generation when they fight again, the army with women fighters would be much smaller as they have been unable to repopulate as fast.

I've been doing a lot of tracking down my ancestry recently, and the main thing that happened when the men died at war was that a lot of women remained widows for the rest of their lives, and the single ladies had to wait a helluva lot longer to get married. It's not like there were a bunch of spare men running around when a bunch get killed off - sex prevalence is nearly 50-50, after all. Surely it would make more sense for equal numbers of me and women to get themselves killed off, to avoid such a gender imbalance following wars, if there was truly a biological drive involved to quickly repopulate.

Yet the flip side is, men died far more and earlier,

Do you have numbers on that? Women died pretty often in childbirth - and it was the men who were desperate to remarry quickly, as they needed someone to take care of them and their children.

When in reality the other ~80% also had a real shit time, working in factories 12hrs a day with no sun light, doing dangerous jobs like mining or fishing, and being forced to fight wars. If this was truely pariarchal, then why didn't they force their women to do these jobs?

You really think the ladies were lounging about at home? They were working just as hard.

I'm not saying women or men have it worse.

You have clearly been saying that men have had it worse, that they face early death for being men, that they are discriminated against in STEM fields, etc.

I do not understand why what I am saying is being so agressively attacked.

Your statements are being attacked because your statements are ignorant and offensive.

Women and men are different, this is a good thing. This is no way an attack on women. Women are on average better at empathy, agreeableness, etc. Men at other things.

You're not attacking women, but you think they should have less professorships and less funding? And how agreeable are you finding the women responding to you at the moment

 

[sb4]

Is it? Do explain.

It is basically what I have been saying in this thread, that evolution would favor men and women thinking diferently on average.

Uh, no. Power and wealth are still based primarily upon (financial) inheritance, not supposedly superior genes. And until very recently, that was pretty much 100% based upon the family someone was born to. The only connection between genes and power is some interesting genetic diseases that were the result of too much inbreeding among royalty.

This is exactly what I'm saying though. Those who inherited wealth have very high social value. Meaning if you had this persons child, that child would be far better off and have much higher survival chances than a child born to a pesant.

Could you cite the studies making this claim? My suspicion is that they're methodological shite.

https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf
I understand that a lot of studies are BS but this makes sense when you look through an evolutionairy lens.

I've been doing a lot of tracking down my ancestry recently, and the main thing that happened when the men died at war was that a lot of women remained widows for the rest of their lives, and the single ladies had to wait a helluva lot longer to get married. It's not like there were a bunch of spare men running around when a bunch get killed off - sex prevalence is nearly 50-50, after all. Surely it would make more sense for equal numbers of me and women to get themselves killed off, to avoid such a gender imbalance following wars, if there was truly a biological drive involved to quickly repopulate.

This may be true since religion was a thing but before we had marrige we had a long time where people were not constrained to one partner, even after death. In these primitive societies it would absolutely pay to save women and re populate.

Do you have numbers on that? Women died pretty often in childbirth - and it was the men who were desperate to remarry quickly, as they needed someone to take care of them and their children.

Men die on average 6yrs before women today. I just looked up this (http://www.ehs.org.uk/press/different-death-rates-of-men-and-women-in-victorian-england) and found that the argument is more nuanced than I first thouh. Women die earlier in victorian england in some areas (child birth) men in others (work death).

You really think the ladies were lounging about at home? They were working just as hard.

I do not think this and nothing in my post even suggests I thought this. I am simply saying that gender roles affected both genders, some men had it worse than women, some women worse than men. It isn't resonable to look just at the top 20% of men and decide men had it a lot better.

You have clearly been saying that men have had it worse, that they face early death for being men, that they are discriminated against in STEM fields, etc.

Well then you have missunderstood me. I haven't once said men have it overall worse nor women. I think that it's pretty close, both gender have to deal with sh*t however in current debate only one side of the story is told and actively worked on and those who mention the other side often get slapped down as biggots trying to hold women back.
I understand the mindset of, women have it significantly worse so we will deal with mens issues when women are more equal. I just disagree with it.

BTW I'm not advicating for mens rights nescesarily, just that I think there are bigger issues today than gender politics and the debate shouldn't be so one sided.

Your statements are being attacked because your statements are ignorant and offensive.

Ignorant, maybe. Although I could easily say the same for the statements against me. If you find me politely discussing a different opinion offensive then that's not my problem. People have been far more offensive to me in this thread than I have them. It's annoying because it gets my heart rate up which is bad for me as you know but I know that is to be expected by postin in these threads so I'm not complaining.

You're not attacking women, but you think they should have less professorships and less funding? And how agreeable are you finding the women responding to you at the moment

I don't think they SHOULD have less professorships, I think you can explain why they do without invoking sexism. I don't think they should have less funding, they currently have more funding (STEM) which is unfair and sexist. They should have the same.

I don't find them agreeable, but that doesn't mean women, on average, aren't more agreeable.

 

[Woolie]

I do not understand why what I am saying is being so agressively attacked.

I didn't aggressively attack you, I merely stated that your statements will seem ridiculous to the next generation, and already do to many in the present one. If you want to make the extraordinarily strong claim that women are biologically less suited to senior academic positions than men, then you have to expect strong disagreement.

Statements that generalise about groups should receive zero tolerance. They are not okay. And not even if they are positive, because those create expectations that limit the group you're describing. There's a hint of patronisation to it all - ask any black person who's been told they're probably a good dancer because they're black.

Also, you risk creating differential expectations. People who believe women are generally more agreeable than men may be prone to judge 'disagreeable' women more harshly than their male counterparts. That's a double standard.

 

[Valentijn]

It is basically what I have been saying in this thread, that evolution would favor men and women thinking diferently on average.

Evolution isn't "biological conditioning." As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as biological conditioning, which is why I was interested in hearing your explanation of it.

This is exactly what I'm saying though. Those who inherited wealth have very high social value. Meaning if you had this persons child, that child would be far better off and have much higher survival chances than a child born to a pesant.

No, you said that women were attracted to powerful men because those men supposedly have better genes.

https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf
I understand that a lot of studies are BS but this makes sense when you look through an evolutionairy lens.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261 provides a good analysis of it, starting about halfway down the page. Basically there were a large number of dropouts due to fussiness, especially among males. Effect sizes in having a preference were very small, so if sex does cause a preference in infants to look at different things, it's not very influential - only a small percentage of females looked at the face more than the mobile, and vice versa for the males, meaning there was a lot more similarity than difference in the different sexes.

Additionally, the mobile was designed to look like a human face - albeit with features misplaced. You could just as easily claim that newborn boys prefer abstract art to being stared at by a woman with strong opinions about female social superiority (the lead author). While judging the interest in the mobile versus the lead author's face was somewhat blinded, she was not blinded to the sex of the infants she was staring at, and may very well have been engaging in more social behavior toward the females, which could have improved reciprocation of interest.

So yes, the study design was crap, the sensationalist results showing up in the media were post-hoc and spun, and the study proves nothing except how easy it is for quacks to waste time and money when they set their minds to it.

This may be true since religion was a thing but before we had marrige we had a long time where people were not constrained to one partner, even after death. In these primitive societies it would absolutely pay to save women and re populate.

Marriage wasn't invented to create a new behavior. It was created to codify an existing behavior. Based on similar behavior in many animals, monogamy is likely the default human behavior (regarding social relationships, at least, if not in regards to sexual intercourse), and is certainly not anything new.

 

[sb4]

I didn't aggressively attack you, I merely stated that your statements will seem ridiculous to the next generation, and already do to many in the present one. If you want to make the extraordinarily strong claim that women are biologically less suited to senior academic positions than men, then you have to expect strong disagreement.

You may not have, but others have. I have said that women may be less biologically suited to some jobs, and more to others. Do you think it is an extraordinary claim that women are biologically more suited, on average, to raising kids, jobs with where social skills are more relevant, and less suited to basketball? I do not.
I expect strong disagreement as long as its civil I don't mind.

Statements that generalise about groups should receive zero tolerance. They are not okay. And not even if they are positive, because those create expectations that limit the group you're describing. There's a hint of patronisation to it all - ask any black person who's been told they're probably a good dancer because they're black.

I disagree with this. If I said asian people are small, nords are lighter skinned, women are shorter, these are all generalizastions and they are true and not holding anyone back. Of course there are exceptions, basketball playing asains, albino africans, however we are talking on averages. This isn't patronising. Saying women are not superior or inferior, just different, is objectively true and not holding anybody back. Saying that everyone is the same could be holding people back; Want to go part time / be a stay at home mum to raise and bond with your kid? Then you are a victim of the patriachy. It works both ways.

Also, you risk creating differential expectations. People who believe women are generally more agreeable than men may be prone to judge 'disagreeable' women more harshly than their male counterparts. That's a double standard.

This is true, however the opposite is true, if you think that both men and women are the same agreeable, yet you come across more disagreeable men, then you may think that it is this way because of patriarchy.

 

[Adrian]

Interest in womens soccer is very very small compared to men. This means they get less views, less views = lower profit.

I believe originally there was a high interest in womans football in the UK but the FA banned women from playing on any FA approved pitches until around 1974. Woman's football now has a long way to go to catch up in the UK but the big clubs are investing.

 

[sb4]

Marriage wasn't invented to create a new behavior. It was created to codify an existing behavior. Based on similar behavior in many animals, monogamy is likely the default human behavior (regarding social relationships, at least, if not in regards to sexual intercourse), and is certainly not anything new.

I agree about monogamy being a thing before hand however if your male partner had died no doubt you were back on the market after mourning, with religion it causes you to stay off.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261 provides a good analysis of it, starting about halfway down the page. Basically there were a large number of dropouts due to fussiness, especially among males. Effect sizes in having a preference were very small, so if sex does cause a preference in infants to look at different things, it's not very influential.

Additionally, the mobile was designed to look like a human face - albeit with features misplaced. You could just as easily claim that newborn boys prefer abstract art to being stared at by a woman with strong opinions about female social superiority (the lead author). While judging of interest in the mobile versus the lead author's face was somewhat blinded, she was not blinded to the sex of the infants she was staring at, and may very well have been engaging in more social behavior toward the females, which could have improved reciprocation of interest.

So yes, the study design was crap, the results showing up in the media were post-hoc and spun, and the study proves nothing except how easy it is for quacks to waste time and money when they set their minds to it.

I agree that we can pick apart studies all day but answer me this, do you believe higher testosterone levels have no affect on the brain?

No, you said that women were attracted to powerful men because those men supposedly have better genes.

Yes I did, I also said based on social value. If someone has raised to the top and looks phsically attractive he most likely has good genes, however this isn't fool proof. If he has rised to the top even with not great genes your baby is more likely to survive with his protection.

 

[Valentijn]

I have said that women may be less biologically suited to some jobs, and more to others.

And you have specifically said they are less biologically or mentally suited to be professors. That job does not depend on muscle strength or having a penis.

Saying women are not superior or inferior, just different, is objectively true and not holding anybody back.

Actually it is holding them back when people say that they are less suited to the jobs they want to do. And plenty of them certainly do want to be professors, yet are being hired at a rate with nearly a three-fold difference at different universities in the same country. There is no affirmative action in the Netherlands to call anyone into account for discriminatory hiring practices - only a complete lack of regulation.

 

[sb4]

I believe originally there was a high interest in womans football in the UK but the FA banned women from playing on any FA approved pitches until around 1974. Woman's football now has a long way to go to catch up in the UK but the big clubs are investing.

This is interesting but even so I still dont think you will have more people watching womens football for 2 reasons. Men overwhelmingly enjoy football. Men would like to watch people play in the leagues they would be in if good enough. Most importantly though, you pay to watch the best, it is clear that male athletes outperform female athletes in almost every sport due in part to a body more suited to these activities. You would pay far more to watch the top 2 tennis players than to watch 200th vs 201st (Williams has said similar things in the past, and in 1998 she played an exhibition match and lost to the 203rd-ranked male player)[https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/27/15879520/john-mcenroe-serena-williams-greatest-controversy].

 

[Valentijn]

I agree about monogamy being a thing before hand however if your male partner had died no doubt you were back on the market after mourning, with religion it causes you to stay off.

There is no "market" after a war. There's a ton of dead guys.

I agree that we can pick apart studies all day but answer me this, do you believe higher testosterone levels have no affect on the brain?

I don't believe testosterone levels impact upon a women's capacity to become a professor, or join any other profession.

 

[Valentijn]

Statements that generalise about groups should receive zero tolerance.

So why are we having this discussion here at all? Surely statements which are derogatory based on personal characteristics (race, gender, religion, etc) are a form of personal attack, even if a specific person is never named.

 

[sb4]

And you have specifically said they are less biologically or mentally suited to be professors. That job does not depend on muscle strength or having a penis.

I have said that you can explain the difference with other factors than sexism. I believe women would be better at certain professor roles and worse at others, on average. It appears that this leads to less female professors than male. This is nothing to do with muscle or penis but mental differences (not saying inferior or superior just differences) these differences cause differen't job chosing and chosing to spend more time raising kids. This aboslutely will impact jobs.

Actually it is holding them back when people say that they are less suited to the jobs they want to do. And plenty of them certainly do want to be professors, yet are being hired at a rate with nearly a three-fold difference at different universities in the same country. There is no affirmative action in the Netherlands to call anyone into account for discriminatory hiring practices - only a complete lack of regulation.

When you say people on average are better / worse it shouldn't hold you back if you think you personally are good enough. You could say the other way holds people back, want to take time off to raise your kid yet you have been conditioned to believe that that is sexism? Then you may well be holding yourself back in regards to happiness. But that is peoples choice and I am absolutely not for taking that away.

 

[sb4]

There is no "market" after a war. There's a ton of dead guys.

Yes but some are still alive and they are who are used to repopulate.

I don't believe testosterone levels impact upon a women's capacity to become a professor, or join any other profession.

I guess we have reached the point where we now know on what exactly we disagree on. If we can hash out this then we will solve the disagreement.

So why are we having this discussion here at all? Surely statements which are derogatory based on personal characteristics (race, gender, religion, etc) are a form of personal attack, even if a specific person is never named.

Nothing I have said is derogatory. Only things said about me have been. If you believe that saying men and women are different (not inferior or superior) should deserve zero tolerance then I think that is crazy, but this is not my forum and I don't make the rules.

 

[Adrian]

This is interesting but even so I still dont think you will have more people watching womens football for 2 reasons. Men overwhelmingly enjoy football. Men would like to watch people play in the leagues they would be in if good enough. Most importantly though, you pay to watch the best, it is clear that male athletes outperform female athletes in almost every sport due in part to a body more suited to these activities. You would pay far more to watch the top 2 tennis players than to watch 200th vs 201st (Williams has said similar things in the past, and in 1998 she played an exhibition match and lost to the 203rd-ranked male player)[https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/27/15879520/john-mcenroe-serena-williams-greatest-controversy].

A bit more football history. I've looked it up. It looks like woman's football became popular during WWI and attracted big crowds and continued to do so afterwards leading the the FA banning it in 1921 because of its continued success.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30329606
So when women were given the chance to have a popular sport it was successful and then got killed off. I was wrong about the 1974 it was 1971.

In terms of tennis I think the woman's matches are much more interesting and watchable than the men's tennis which is really quite dull. I think people often forget (especially sports people) that spectator sport is not about who is best but it is about entertainment. People watch to be entertained which in football leads to fans rejecting certain managers who will keep a team up (in the premier league) but play boring and dull football. This happened at Stoke (after the novelty of premier league had gone) and West ham.

 

[sb4]

A bit more football history. I've looked it up. It looks like woman's football became popular during WWI and attracted big crowds and continued to do so afterwards leading the the FA banning it in 1921 because of its continued success.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30329606
So when women were given the chance to have a popular sport it was successful and then got killed off. I was wrong about the 1974 it was 1971.

In terms of tennis I think the woman's matches are much more interesting and watchable than the men's tennis which is really quite dull. I think people often forget (especially sports people) that spectator sport is not about who is best but it is about entertainment. People watch to be entertained which in football leads to fans rejecting certain managers who will keep a team up (in the premier league) but play boring and dull football. This happened at Stoke (after the novelty of premier league had gone) and West ham.

That's pretty interesting but it's both. You want to see interesting football and top level football.

If there was a market for womens football, do you not think the FA and sky sports would be all over it? These companies care about money first and foremost, I don't think they give a d*mn about the patriarchy.

It's the same with videogames. The AAA companies try to squeeze ever last penny out of customers, even encouraging kids to spend parents money on in game gambling. If there was a decent sized market for female gamers they would be all over it. Instead, they are marketed towards teenage boys, because overwhelmingly in my experience these are the people who play videogames.

 

[Arnie Pye]

Something a feminist wrote stuck with me, women don't need men to protect them

I really, really wish this was true in all circumstances. But it isn't. There are many women who go to the doctor accompanied by a partner, husband, father or brother because doctors are more polite and more prepared to listen to women when there is a male witness. They (doctors) will often turn to the man to get confirmation from the man that what the woman is saying is true.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Only 11% professors does not mean women are bad at science, it also doesn't mean there is rampant sexism in science. There are a whole bunch of factors that go into this and I think biology is a huge one and sexism a much smaller one.

As a professor I can vouch for the fact that people are very rarely made professors because they deserve it. They are made professors because it in in the interest of someone else to make them a professor. Departmental heads like to have lots of professors in their departments. But as long as they do not outshine the head of department. So biology very definitely comes in to this - the biology of being higher up in the pecking order and wanting to get even higher up by having some second in command people who are not going to push you off your pedestal. And of course whether the person to be professorised is male or female can loom large in that calculation. There is also quite a lot of Harvey Weinsteining going on.

There are lots of good women in science just below the professor level. It may be that they have other priorities and are not too bothered about being professor but that is not my experience. My experience is that the whole thing stinks. I was made professor because someone got a million quid fund along with it, although in the end the million quid vanished but the Dean was good enough to keep his word about my 'deserving promotion'.

 

[Alvin]

I really, really wish this was true in all circumstances. But it isn't. There are many women who go to the doctor accompanied by a partner, husband, father or brother because doctors are more polite and more prepared to listen to women when there is a male witness. They (doctors) will often turn to the man to get confirmation from the man that what the woman is saying is true.

I suspect it was referring to men who act like women need protecting from the real world and kept in their "place" and covering/dismissing men who behave badly. Examples like the men who say things like "what did she expect going home with him" or "look at what she was wearing" or "women are suited to domestic labour and not "men's" vocations" and crap like that.

Edit: I thought about it further and it still makes sense, these doctors need to learn some lessons just like people who make excuses. Letting things pass when they shouldn't allows them to continue which is what is happening with condescending/sexist doctors who are unchallenged. Having a male present may help the symptom but does not fix the underlying problem.

 

[Barry]

I work in the UK for a large German company, and although we have some female engineers and scientists in the UK, the proportion seems significantly higher in Germany. From my experience (both UK and Germany) they are all supremely good. I do wonder if the answer to the UK's productivity problem might be to encourage more women into 'traditionally male' roles; we seem to be missing out on a major part of the talent pool.