Free to Choose

The Apostate:

Men hold women in contempt.

I find some of them to be cute, actually.

That contempt shows when they pretend they’re better at math and the “hard” sciences because they manage to hound women out of those careers.

How exactly do men in the modern, Western world hound women out of a career in the hard sciences? The imbalance of women in fields such as engineering and physics today is the result of their own choice.

And since women earn more bachelor's degrees than men, there are fields where women outnumber men. Psychology, for instance. Does this imply that men are being chased out of that profession? I don't think so.

Furthermore, in a free society, these asymmetries will likely not get resolved. Men and women are different and as a group they choose divergent careers. It's silly to think that unless every field has a 50-50 split between the two genders, discrimination is at play.

When it comes to hard sciences and the glory and prestige that goes along with it, the gender ratio will favor men.

Hating men won't alter this reality.

Comments

[Francis W. Porretto]

How can you stand to read this Apostate character? His wishful thinking centers appear to have taken over his whole body

[Isaac Schrödinger]

"How can you stand to read this Apostate character?"

I started reading her blog mainly because of her experience in Saudi Arabia and her commentary on Islam.

Our background is similar. Though, her views on American politics and men are so violently different than mine that lately it has been like watching a train wreck.

Perhaps, that's not healthy.

[MikeT]

This says it all:

Islam, naturally, is a huge interest, although now that it doesn’t have much influence on my life, I’m less unhealthily obsessed with it. Religion, politics, feminism, literature, history, art…let’s just say I’m your garden variety humanities major.

By profession, I’m a paralegal for an intellectual property law firm in San Francisco, CA. I will have been in the glorious United States for 4 years on January 24, 2008.

That sounds like she can really speak from experience about what it's like for women to work in science, engineering or IT.

[Tim]

Isaac, I think you're vastly oversimplifying this area of inquiry.

I study cognitive science and took a graduate level seminar in gender and cognition last semester. We reviewed a ton of literature, and frankly, while there are certain differences in the neural or cognitive strategies employed by men and women in dealing with certain problems, it's a stretch to jump from that and argue that men or women have *overall advantages* in certain fields. A responsible social scientist simply can't make that leap. Add to this everything we know now from studies of neuroplasticity and I'm highly skeptical of the idea that certain skills can't be learned.

And even the empirical literature is quite mixed. It is very, very difficult to get clear-cut answers on issues of differential intelligence between the sexes and races.

Here's one meta-analysis that concludes the opposite of what you're saying: that men and women are mostly similar in their cognitive abilities, although there are three areas where differences warrant attention, namely physical strength, aggression, and appetite for sex (no surprises there).
http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/amp606581.pdf

[George C.]

A responsible social scientist simply can't make that leap.

And yet they do! They assume that there are no inherent differences, thus all differences in outcome must be due to sexism.

[E. Nigma]

Women hounded out of the sciences and engineering?
Since I was in college in the '70's, colleges have been DYING to get women into sciences and engineering. Women who graduate with degrees will absolutely get hired into a good entry job. All the women I have known in the sciences and engineering who knew anything have been much more successful than I.

What planet does this person live on?