Click to enlarge.
REUTERS (June 20) -- "The White House announced new measures to help increase the number of women in
the science, math and technology fields as part of a celebration
for the 40-year anniversary of a law prohibiting discrimination
in education based on gender. The new guidelines are reinforcements to the law, known as
Title IX.They include the Department of Education broadening data collection in public schools for more accurate analysis of the gender and minority gaps in enrollment, graduation rates and in science classes. New guidelines will also be issued to grant-receiving universities and colleges to help institutions comply with Title IX rules in the science, technology, engineering and math fields."
MP: At that June celebration, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said it was "imperative" that more girls are encouraged to pursue careers in STEM fields, and Carnegie Mellon University president Jarod Cohon described the under-representation of women in STEM education as a "national crisis."
The data in the table above (click to enlarge) are from the Department of Education and show college degrees for the Class of 2010 (most recent year available) by gender and field of study. Based on those outcomes in the table, here are some gender gaps that will most likely: a) be exempt from any Title IX rules, b) not result in any "imperatives" to encourage boys to pursue different fields of study, and c) will not be referred to as a "national crisis":
1. Women earned more bachelor's (57.2%), master's (60.3%) and doctor's degrees (51.7%) than men in 2010 reflecting gender gaps in favor of women at all levels of higher education. The gender imbalance favoring women was especially significant at the master's level, where 152 women earned master's degrees in 2010 for every 100 men.
2. In 9 out of 17 major fields of study at the bachelor's and doctor's levels, and in 11 out of 17 fields at the master's level, women were over-represented. Some of the fields of study with the biggest gender imbalances favoring women include:
a. Health Professions (85.1% female at the undergraduate level and 81.4% at the master's level),
b. Public Administration and Social Services (82% female at the undergraduate level and 75.2% at the master's level),
c. Psychology (more than 70% female at all three levels)
d. Biology (53% or higher at all three levels, 58.5% for bachelor's degrees - isn't Biology a STEM field?)
e. Education (79.5% for bachelor's degrees and 77% for master's degrees)
3. Although not displayed in the table, there are huge gender degree disparities in favor of women for certain health fields at the doctoral level like veterinary medicine (77.6% female), pharmacy (63.8% female) and optometry (66.0% female).
The White House's concern for gender imbalances appears to very selective and isolated to only certain fields of study where women are under-represented. On the other hand, there appears to be no concern at all about the overall college degree gap in favor of women, and no concern or Title IX rules for fields of study like health professions (572 women graduating with bachelor's degrees for every 100 men), education, psychology (395 women graduating with master's degrees for every 100 men), biology, communication, veterinary medicine (346 women graduating with doctor's degrees for every 100 men).
There is now even some speculation that the ultimate goal of the White House is to use Title IX to impose a very narrowly targeted quota system for STEM education, or "science quotas for women," to overcome the alleged gender discrimination against women in STEM that is supposedly to blame for the gender disparities. But shouldn't the application of the "disparity-proves-discrimination" dogma that is motivating the extension of Title IX to STEM education also be applied to the non-STEM fields as well, and the STEM fields where women are over-represented (biology, veterinary medicine, etc.)? After all, if perfect gender parity in STEM is the goal of Title IX, then the natural extension of that approach is to impose perfect gender parity for all fields of study. Therefore, simple logic would dictate that we either apply Title IX comprehensively across all of fields of study to socially engineer perfect gender degree parity for all majors, or we don't apply it all. But to apply Title IX selectively to only STEM fields would be inconsistent, illogical and contradictory and would expose the fallacy of the White House's very, very selective concern for gender imbalances.
Quotas will not put more women into STEM fields. Their only effect will be to decimate the number of men in those fields, much as UCLA was forced to drop its multiple Olympic gold medal winning men's swim team.
ReplyDeleteObama is just pandering to women, because he needs them to be re-elected.
ReplyDeleteBut that such pandering DOES work on women (who apparently take glee in the misfortune of men) reflects badly on the moral capacity of the female gender.
Yet another Presidential re-election evolution that soon after November 2 will go the way the way of the buggy whip.
ReplyDeleteWhat I can't figure out is which demographic he is going after. Earlier this week it was the working welfare who don't have to work any longer. Today it is ....
Women will never be a major force in STEM, because :
ReplyDelete1) They have no interest in it.
2) We see no evidence that they are good at it, unless the women in question happen to be Asian.
3) STEM careers would put women amongst co-workers that they would loathe : nerdy men.
So no, women in STEM will never happen, nor is it necessary that it does.
The over-representation of women in certain fields will be the more likely areas that the future STEM students will be drawn from. If they are successful in moving toward 50/50 in STEM fields, the others (where men are under-represented), will necessarily move toward equal representation also, without gov't action specifically directed toward the latter.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that the social engineers never ever envision is the result of their meddling. And there will always be a result, and it will usually include something undesirable. Unfortunately, the undesirable part will never be seen as something they created. It will be seen as a new problem (or the stubborn persistence of the original "problem"), that needs immediate action on the part of the social engineers.
A possible outcome of this pursuit is that there will be many people working in the STEM fields who will find out in their 30's or 40's that they really don't like doing what they are doing. Prepare to hear of all the mid-life career problems among STEM professionals, and the over-representation of women in that group. This could go as far as alarming reports telling us how much higher the suicide rate is for women in STEM fields than men.
(no I'm not saying they will all kill themselves. But if the general population rate is 3 per 100,000, and among STEM women it's 5, the headling will be "OMG, WOMEN ARE 67% MORE LIKELY TO COMMIT SUICIDE!!!" subheading - "Men still suck")
If a person is studiying something they are not interested in all that much, they are more likely to enter that field being not as good at doing whatever it is, than someone who is very much into it. We may very well hear the bleak news reports about how, despite all the good work of the social engineers, women contirue to lag in earnings, which of course, requires more action on the part of the social engineers. But the salary differences may very well not be due to discrimination, but rather the simple fact that too many women just aren't all that excited about woking in whatever STEM field some guidance counselor talked them into entering, and it reflects in their performance on the job.
When there are too many women in an english class and too few women in an engineering class, a government bureaucrat can tell the women some of you cannot take english and have to switch to engineering.
ReplyDelete@ reprise8:
ReplyDelete"If they are successful in moving toward 50/50 in STEM fields, the others (where men are under-represented), will necessarily move toward equal representation also, without gov't action specifically directed toward the latter."
This is not correct. In theory, both STEM and non-STEM fields could be populated 100% by women (as they were once by men).
Jamie -
ReplyDeleteIn theory, you're correct. What would be the odds that a significant percentage of men drops out of the workforce? I know I'm speculating, but let's at least make it look like we're staying in the real world.
ken says: "STEM requires higher IQs than non-STEM. Men are on average smarter than women (105 vs 100) with a larger standard deviation (15 vs 10), so the number of genius men is MUCH larger than the number of genius women (4.75% of men have IQ's greater than 130, whereas only 0.13% of women do)"...
ReplyDeleteWell ken maybe, just maybe that whole line of reasoning might need a reconsideration if this UK Daily Mail article is at all credible: Women overtake men in IQ tests for the first time in 100 years (but is it all down to multitasking?)
This year women finally came out on top - and it may be because they are better at multitasking. The breakthrough has been uncovered by James Flynn, the world-renowned authority on IQ tests.
He told the Sunday Times: 'In the last 100 years the IQ scores of both men and women have risen but women's have risen faster.This is a consequence of modernity.
'The complexity of the modern world is making our brains adapt and raising our IQ. The full effect of modernity on women is only just emerging.'
(personally I'm wondering if some politically correct pandering is going on with this alledged study?)
I wonder if this alleged IQ test contained a significant element of writing and/or prose. I believe there is significant bias related to quality of handwriting. Well-written prose won't get a good grade if it's done in chicken scratch, which test evaluators will no doubt deny. Women don't do as well on tests of purely objective facts.
ReplyDeleteNote that when they couldn't jigger the old SAT to get equal results from boys & girls, they deliberately created bias in the new (current) SAT by having two verbal sections to one math, rather than the 1:1 the old SAT had. It also has a scoring curve deliberately designed to compress results above the mean.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteThat too, but I was in a more generous mood...
I found a poll on misandry, and whether it is going too far in society.
ReplyDeleteY'all should go vote in it.
But the results were a surprise.
I appreciate Dr. Perry's posts on sexism and racism--in whatever form they take. Obviously, if we are to have social goals enacted by government, it is men who need help.
ReplyDelete"I'm prepared to change my mind. However, I'm going to need to see harder data than an article in the UK's MailOnline, which doesn't provide any data, nor any links"...
ReplyDeleteWell bart right now I'm considering it mildly interesting at best...
The Daily Mail article made mention of the Times and I assumed it was the Times of London but I've yet to locate it...
I think this might be the Sunday Times link but not being a registered user I'm not sure...
I would be highly suspicious of any IQ test in a misandry-heavy society like the US or UK.
ReplyDeleteIf tests show women in the US or UK are doing better than men, but not in any other countries like Japan or Finland or Germany, that clearly shows the test has been rigged by feminists, and is certainly not evidence of female superiority.
"...Carnegie Mellon University president Jarod Cohon described the under-representation of women in STEM education as a 'national crisis.'"
ReplyDeleteHe has federal dollar signs in his eyes.
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ReplyDeletejuan,
ReplyDeleteWell bart right now I'm considering it mildly interesting at best...
bart hasn't commented anywhere on this thread. To whom are you talking?