# Scientific facts are oppressing women **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 22, 2016, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606 "2016-09-22T22:53:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/21 "2016-09-23T13:27:59Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > She isn’t saying the science is gendered…she is saying the way it is taught favors men. That isn’t even new news. As we continue to try and figure out why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields, study after study shows similar bias. > > [Women and Physics - Book - IOPscience](http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-1-6817-4277-9) We already know why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields. STEM fields are math-intensive, and men tend to be better at math than women, and STEM fields are time-intensive, and women tend to be more involved in child care and raising than men. This grad student twit pretending that the correctness of the answer to a math question is open to discussion isn’t going to change that. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/22 "2016-09-23T13:53:25Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > She isn’t saying the science is gendered…she is saying the way it is taught favors men. That isn’t even new news. As we continue to try and figure out why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields, study after study shows similar bias. > > [Women and Physics - Book - IOPscience](http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-1-6817-4277-9) “The way it is taught,” being the assertions that one can reliably draw accurate conclusions from scientific data presented in different formats, as opposed to teaching that knowledge is constructed by the student and dynamic, subject to change as it would in a more feminist view of knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/23 "2016-09-23T14:32:55Z")
I wonder if such students, when given a bad grade, would challenge the grade - “According to \*my \*interpretation of math, my answers were correct!” ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/24 "2016-09-23T14:54:01Z")
This might explain my wife’s inability to get anywhere on time. 8:00 PM is itself mutable based on the construct of the person with the watch! All these years, I thought it was because she’s Dominican. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/25 "2016-09-23T15:08:44Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > No, it’s not irrelevant. It’s manicheism painted over as feminism, and the paint has flaked before it’s even dried. There are a million other labels she could have chosen, or she could have invented some, but she chose to use pseudofeminism instead. “Manicheism” is very fair critique, I think. When I said that it was irrelevant, I meant that it was unnecessary to ascribe the different approaches to teaching the curriculum as masculine/feminine. I don’t agree that those terms are necessary or useful in describing the different approaches to learning. > [@WhyNot](#): > > I don’t necessarily disagree that science - particularly medicine - is constantly changing as we learn more, and the “facts” of yesteryear (stomach ulcers are caused by stress and bad food, burning herbs will prevent the plague, epileptics are possessed by demons, etc.) are supplanted with today’s facts that may or may not end up being true in 20 years when we know even more. > > But what I don’t get is how that is “feminine”. Well, I think perhaps the author was trying to say that rote learning, with its clear power differential and imposition of knowledge (and its clear ideas about who possess knowledge and who doesn’t) is a masculine way of looking at the world. Whereas, a more collaborative approach which acknowledges that both teacher and student have much to both learn and teach is a feminine approach. I think that’s where she’s going with it. But as I said, I think that clinging to this yin/yang thing is both unhelpful and inaccurate. > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Knowledge is the fruit of that scientific discovery process. Indeed. But it’s important to remember at all times that the scientific discovery process is a _process_. It is not finished. You can’t just take a few classes and assume that’s it. > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > The problem is that when it comes to STEM classes, there’s so much of that knowledge that there’s not enough time for students to engage in a science-museum style voyage of discovery. You are seriously misinformed if you believe that this is a problem unique to stem classes. > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > TL,DR: STEM curricula eschew holding students hands through “a process of discovery” because there isn’t enough time for it. In addition to a fundamental aptitude, incoming STEM students need to arrive with a built-in interest for the subject matter. No one is suggesting that STEM classes all have to start with the discovery of the wheel. What the OP article is suggesting is a way to make classes sound more appealing to students when they are choosing their fields of study. One way of doing this is to present the curriculum in a way that is more inclusive. This is actually vitally important. The fundamental principal of higher education - even more important than “publish or perish” - is “Bums In Seats”. If the STEM departments wish to receive better funding and resources, they need to maintain their enrollment numbers. This means appealing to students who are not already STEM Lords. What this comes down to is simple numbers: some students thrive in rote learning classes. Some students want classes where the teach talks for 90 minutes and they take notes. Other students do better in a class that’s focused on discussion and direct involvement, where they’re challenged by their teachers rather than lectured at. Planning the curriculum so that it takes advantage of a variety of teaching techniques means that more students will be drawn to the courses, to the benefit of both the students and departments. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/26 "2016-09-23T15:13:46Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > I don’t think I’d like to cross a bridge engineered by someone that rejects the notion that correct decision should be based on knowledge and facts. ^ This. Frankly, I find it insulting that someone would think that my desire to know facts and have definite answers to some questions about the world makes me somehow or other less feminine. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/27 "2016-09-23T15:34:38Z")
Like others, I think the author failed at using the terms she used to describe the situation. It seems like a critique on teaching styles. > [@](#): > > Originally Posted by Ale > > I don’t think I’d like to cross a bridge engineered by someone that rejects the notion that correct decision should be based on knowledge and facts. See, but would you prefer a bridge engineered by someone who constructs things automatically “because this is how they’re done” or “this is the way I was taught and nothing else” or “this is what they told me was how to build a bridge”, or someone who looks at the various components, the soil, the river, the environment, the workload and says “typically, a bridge would be built xyz, but in this case, I think based on these pecularities, doing it rst way will be better”. It’s the difference between just plugging numbers in a formula and knowing which formula to use with a given situation. So this is more a complain on a teaching style (rote memorization instead of analysis). I had to do a postgraduate certificate for faculty in higher education teaching, and some of the most fervents believes in some change in outlook were precisely the younger engineer faculty. Even more so, perhaps, than other STEM and nonSTEM fields represented in the course. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/28 "2016-09-23T15:46:01Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > We already know why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields. STEM fields are math-intensive, and men tend to be better at math than women, and STEM fields are time-intensive, and women tend to be more involved in child care and raising than men. > > Regards, > Shodan 1. People forget that STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. If you want to talk about engineering and math, call it EM, but there are four components, not all of them equally math intensive. 2. Within the realm of Science, many people include medical science, which includes nursing and veterinary medicine. 3. So a lot of the STEM areas are already drawing in large numbers of women (certainly nursing and veterinary medicine, along with many of the life sciences). Granted, they are not as math-intensive as engineering or math, but they’re still part of STEM areas (and are by no means a walk in the park). 4. Therefore, using the excuse that women may not enter or excel in STEM fields because of math is only true for the later two parts. 5. Considering time consuming, again go back what areas STEM stand for. I know many engineers who work less hours than other STEM professions (particularly in the medical field), and only after doing 5 years of bachelor (plus perhaps a master’s). So what is the time consuming part in this? Conversely, nursing, again, and veterinary medicine (and several specialties of medicine) are increasingly if not traditionally studied by women. These professions are time intensive, either on the training required or the working hours. Saying women wouldn’t enter STEM because of that is ignorant. 6. To get from the perhaps not so STEM area, teachers are known in many cases to have stressful, difficult work schedules that can, depending on the situation, be time intensive. Yet they are mainly women. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/29 "2016-09-23T15:51:48Z")
[QUOTE=KarlGrenze] See, but would you prefer a bridge engineered by someone who constructs things automatically “because this is how they’re done” or “this is the way I was taught and nothing else” or “this is what they told me was how to build a bridge”, or someone who looks at the various components, the soil, the river, the environment, the workload and says “typically, a bridge would be built xyz, but in this case, I think based on these pecularities, doing it rst way will be better”… [/QUOTE] I’m not an engineer/bridge designer, but I smell a load of straw here. Taking into account soil and other environmental factors undoubtedly _is_ part of the evidence-based way to build a bridge. A better analogy would involve someone submitting a bridge design that peremptorily rejected analysis of established load and safety factors, justifying their position by saying that utilizing such data was a form of oppression and that using student “knowledge” was a kinder and more feminine way of approaching the project. \*There is currently a controversy in San Francisco over a high-rise condo building that is gradually sinking into the ground and starting to tilt (it was built on a landfill and somebody goofed). I’m pretty sure the problem was not due to the male hierarchy insisting on power, but someone ignoring good design/construction principles. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/30 "2016-09-23T16:02:11Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I’m not an engineer/bridge designer, but I smell a load of straw here. Taking into account soil and other environmental factors undoubtedly _is_ part of the evidence-based way to build a bridge. > > A better analogy would involve someone submitting a bridge design that peremptorily rejected analysis of established load and safety factors, justifying their position by saying that utilizing such data was a form of oppression and that using student “knowledge” was a kinder and more feminine way of approaching the project. > > \*There is currently a controversy in San Francisco over a high-rise condo building that is gradually sinking into the ground and starting to tilt (it was built on a landfill and somebody goofed). I’m pretty sure the problem was not due to the male hierarchy insisting on power, but someone ignoring good design/construction principles. I suspect there is plenty of straw on the other end as well. I have a friend who has a son going into engineering. She said that for the most part, the first two years plus of program are the rote memorization - the last two you start to get into the analysis. This works great for people whose minds are divided in this manner, but it doesn’t work for everyone - and possibly is a contributing factor towards women not sticking with the program and choosing a different course of study. More “modern” engineering programs tend to start the analysis and practical applications earlier - and tend to have better retention. This is all hearsay from a mother who looked into it for a son who wanted to be an engineer. I haven’t looked into it myself. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/31 "2016-09-23T16:21:04Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > 1. People forget that STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. If you want to talk about engineering and math, call it EM, but there are four components, not all of them equally math intensive. > > 2. Within the realm of Science, many people include medical science, which includes nursing and veterinary medicine. > > 3. So a lot of the STEM areas are already drawing in large numbers of women (certainly nursing and veterinary medicine, along with many of the life sciences). Granted, they are not as math-intensive as engineering or math, but they’re still part of STEM areas (and are by no means a walk in the park). > > 4. Therefore, using the excuse that women may not enter or excel in STEM fields because of math is only true for the later two parts. If you want to consider medical sciences as part of STEM fields, women tend to go into the less demanding, less time-intensive areas like nursing rather than medical school. > [@](#): > > 1. Considering time consuming, again go back what areas STEM stand for. I know many engineers who work less hours than other STEM professions (particularly in the medical field), and only after doing 5 years of bachelor (plus perhaps a master’s). So what is the time consuming part in this? In the fact that STEM professions are more time consuming than non-STEM professions. > [@](#): > > 1. To get from the perhaps not so STEM area, teachers are known in many cases to have stressful, difficult work schedules that can, depending on the situation, be time intensive. Yet they are mainly women. Teachers typically work fewer hours than the average salaried professionals ([cite](http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/EDFP_a_00133)). Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/32 "2016-09-23T16:31:09Z")
Within a certain boundary of facts, there can be lively discussion and debate and exploration of the issues - i.e., what factors drove Hitler to become the man he became? Why is the Arab world the way it is today? Etc. etc. But with some other issues, there is no room for disagreement or debate. If a flight instructor says that the way to recover from an aerodynamic stall is to lower the aircraft’s nose, but the novice flight student wants to suggest that the way to recover from the stall is to pull up the aircraft nose in order to increase the angle of attack, then the student is simply wrong. There is no debate to be had. Right is right and wrong is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/33 "2016-09-23T16:35:08Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > ^ This. > > Frankly, I find it insulting that someone would think that my desire to know facts and have definite answers to some questions about the world makes me somehow or other less feminine. I think the author of that article may have valid points but phrased her wording or argument poorly, but - yes - she is, indirectly, feeding the arguments of bigots or MRAs who like to claim that women are less logical or rational/reasonable than men. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/34 "2016-09-23T17:23:25Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > We already know why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields. STEM fields are math-intensive, and men tend to be better at math than women, and STEM fields are time-intensive, and women tend to be more involved in child care and raising than men. We know the men tend to be more comfortable with math, and are encouraged more to study it. We don’t know that men tend to be better at it, when coming from an equal background. So no, we don’t know why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/35 "2016-09-23T17:37:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Consistent with the prior literature, when children enter kindergarten, girls and boys > are observationally equivalent in both math and reading. By the end of fifth grade, however, girls > have fallen more than 0.2 standard deviations behind their male counterparts in math.6 The math > gap is equivalent to 2.5 months of schooling. **Girls are losing ground in math in every region of > the country, every racial group, all levels of the socio-economic distribution, every family > structure, and in both public and private schools**. By the end of the sample, girls do significantly worse than boys on every math skill tested. Emphasis added. [Cite, pdf](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/an_empirical_analysis_of_the_gender_gap_in_mathematics.pdf). Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/36 "2016-09-23T17:46:47Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Dangerosa** : > > She isn’t saying the science is gendered…she is saying the way it is taught favors men. That isn’t even new news. As we continue to try and figure out why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields, study after study shows similar bias. Certainly there’s a bias. And publications like this are probably one part of the reason. Really, do you think a paper like that is going to encourage women to go into (or more precisely, to stay in) technical fields? > [@](#): > > Quoth **Merneith** : > > This is actually vitally important. The fundamental principal of higher education - even more important than “publish or perish” - is “Bums In Seats”. If the STEM departments wish to receive better funding and resources, they need to maintain their enrollment numbers. This means appealing to students who are not already STEM Lords. Absolutely incorrect. Every STEM program in every college in the country deliberately front-loads the course load with the most difficult courses (to within the constraints of which courses can be taught before which other ones), because they want to make sure that those students who get weeded out will do so early, before the school wastes too much time and effort on them. > [@](#): > > Quoth **Shodan** : > > We already know why women don’t tend to go into STEM fields. STEM fields are math-intensive, and men tend to be better at math than women… How do you reconcile this with the fact that in grade school, girls perform significantly better than boys at math? ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/37 "2016-09-23T17:49:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Certainly there’s a bias. And publications like this are probably one part of the reason. Really, do you think a paper like that is going to encourage women to go into (or more precisely, to stay in) technical fields? Well, they weren’t there in anything resembling proportional numbers before we started studying this, so I’m not sure its going to hurt. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/38 "2016-09-23T17:51:35Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > You are seriously misinformed if you believe that this is a problem unique to stem classes. I only have my own experience as a mechanical engineer to draw on. But FWIW, the specific complaint of the woman described in the OP was about STEM classes. > [@Dangerosa](#): > > I have a friend who has a son going into engineering. She said that for the most part, the first two years plus of program are the rote memorization - the last two you start to get into the analysis. This works great for people whose minds are divided in this manner, but it doesn’t work for everyone - and possibly is a contributing factor towards women not sticking with the program and choosing a different course of study. > > More “modern” engineering programs tend to start the analysis and practical applications earlier - and tend to have better retention. > > This is all hearsay from a mother who looked into it for a son who wanted to be an engineer. I haven’t looked into it myself. My freshman year of college was nearly 30 years ago, so my memory is a bit hazy. But I don’t remember much in the way of rote memorization. I had required humanities electives and required general curricula to get out of the way - English, sociology 101, psychology 101, anthropology 101, chemistry 101, and so on. But the low-level engineering classes definitely were not about rote memorization. I recall a drafting class (yep, with real pencils and straightedges!), where you had to get good at thinking about how a 3D object looks from different directions, or conceive of the 3D object represented by various views seen on paper. Lots of calculus classes (where you learned a lot of concepts, not so much brute-force memorization of facts), and statics (analyzing forces in stationary structures). That last one in particular, statics, was where I remember really being deliberately taught to apply an analytical thought process to problem-solving. Sophomore year, there were fewer electives (I remember taking a history class and another titled “heroes in mythology,” which was actually fairly interesting), and the engineering classes continued to teach concepts and analytical approaches to problem-solving. Not much in the way of memorization. In contrast, I roomed with several med students during grad school, and those guys had a _shitload_ of rote memorization. Gross anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, and so on. Of their time spent outside of the classroom, an astonishing amount was spent simply cramming facts into their brains. ---
**Author:** ![Hooleehootoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/eada6e/32.png) [@Hooleehootoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hooleehootoo)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/39 "2016-09-23T19:03:37Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Earlier this year we had [feminist perspectives on glaciology](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=786492&highlight=glaciers). But that raises the obvious question, why haven’t we yet had a feminist perspective on syllabi in science courses? … I want to know what she would make of a syllabus on\*\* Feminist Glaciology\*\*. Would it be like [Kirk defeating Norman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Mudd) ? ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/40 "2016-09-23T19:20:00Z")
MRA? Is this the latest thing on the Dope? Is this somehow related to those neckbeardy redpill guys? We have those types here? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606.md?page=3)