# 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:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/41 "2016-09-23T19:37:12Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Emphasis added. [Cite, pdf](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/an_empirical_analysis_of_the_gender_gap_in_mathematics.pdf). > > Regards, > Shodan That doesn’t mean that men are inherently better at math. It could be that boys are assumed to be better at math and so are given more encouragement. Or girls are assumed to be more interested in reading and so are encouraged to just get their math work done so they can go back to reading their fun books. Also, there have been multiple studies done about how the knowledge of stereotypes by students and teachers affects students’ performances. [Here’s one discussion of it](https://www.natcom.org/CommCurrentsArticle.aspx?id=845): > [@](#): > > Over the years, instructional communication researchers have identified a myriad of environmental factors that can render academic settings inhospitable to women, from overt sexist language to more subtle cues that trivialize women’s intellectual performance. Consideration of these factors has informed the development of communicative strategies for raising educators’ gender sensitivity in the classroom. However, the phenomenon of stereotype threat suggests that internal factors (e.g., one’s fear of confirming a negative stereotype) can also contribute to female students’ perception of an antagonistic academic environment. I’m a female engineer, but I think I was helped by the fact that my mom and her mom were both math majors, and my mom is a computer programmer. So I probably only learned the stereotype as a child about girls being bad at math after I already knew that obviously they weren’t since my mom and grandmother are super smart and great at math. So if you had given 2nd grade me and another equally smart 2nd grade girl a hard math problem, I might have struggled through and gotten an answer because I knew I could do it, and the other girl might have struggled and given up because she knew that math is hard and girls are bad at math. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/42 "2016-09-23T19:48:13Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > MRA? Is this the latest thing on the Dope? Is this somehow related to those neckbeardy redpill guys? We have those types here? It is, and we do. The last couple years around here have done a lot for my appreciation of how much the world, totally unbeknownst to me, is out to get me. You too! ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/43 "2016-09-23T19:51:23Z")
Congratulations, OP. You’ve discovered yet another idiot academic. ---
**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, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/44 "2016-09-23T19:53:30Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > It is, and we do. The last couple years around here have done a lot for my appreciation of how much the world, totally unbeknownst to me, is out to get me. You too! Good thing I’m not a fundamentally insecure bucket of snivel, I suppose. ---
**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, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/45 "2016-09-23T19:54:46Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > 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. The latest statistics I’ve seen indicate close to half of all medical students are women, and something like 46% of all physicians in training are female. Women are increasingly outnumbering men in veterinary medicine, which strikes me as a pretty demanding field. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/46 "2016-09-23T20:24:18Z")
> [@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. _Mathematics for Engineers_ was the leading text for much of the 20th century (in print from 1926 through 1979). It was really dull and written by a dull guy: Raymond W. Dull to be precise. But that’s the nature of a lot of university studies, including feminist studies. To intellectually play with stuff, there must first be some stuff with which to play, so for the first while, students’ heads get stuffed with stuff. The key is to design courses that cover both filling the gaping void with stuff while at the same time developing critical and creative thinking skills. As far as the grad student from North Dakota’s hockey college goes, I don’t see her logic in associating the STEM discourse register with discrimination against women and minorities. She would do well to read Irving M. Copi’s _Introduction to Logic_, (which has outpaced Dull for longevity – 1953 through to the present) to work on separating the shit from the shinola when building an argument. Using a standpoint approach when trying to figure out how to make STEM courses inclusive of all people is a very useful approach (and in my humble opinion, is a necessary approach), but she throws the baby out with the bathwater by trying to force her discourse register on math, which is itself is gender neutral. In short, too much word salad. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/47 "2016-09-23T20:32:03Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > … … She would do well to read Irving M. Copi’s _Introduction to Logic_, (which has outpaced Dull for longevity – 1953 through to the present) to work on separating the shit from the shinola when building an argument. … Oh great, steer her to another biased make academic. 😛 And my guess is that both shit and shinola are concepts from the male power elite! ---
**Author:** ![Redwing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@Redwing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redwing)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/48 "2016-09-23T20:32:45Z")
> [@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. While some of them go to further extremes than others, all of them require a solid grounding in math. [quote] 2. Within the realm of Science, many people include medical science, which includes nursing and veterinary medicine.[\quote] While many branches on medical science only require a solid understand of statistics, quite a few require a deeper understanding of math. Genetics requires some set theory, and there’s some interesting work being done in pulmonary fluid dynamics. > [@](#): > > 1. 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). While I don’t have numbers, the medical school here isn’t having issues recruiting highly qualified women as students, teachers, or administrators. Only a couple of parts of the IT department are heavily male. [quote] 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. [\quote] I doubt it’s even true there. I expect that the issue certain STEM fields isn’t even vaguely ability based. My career path has been generally male dominated, but in the last 5 or 10 years I’ve seen more and more women, mostly in fairly senior roles. What I haven’t seen, and what concerns me, is the lack of women in the basic starter roles for the field. I’ve seen a few here and there, and they’ve all had at least one story of people telling them that they shouldn’t be going to the field. I think those conversations are why out the 20 or so people I work with every day, two are women and only one of those is technical. > [@](#): > > 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? 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. > > 2. 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. I’ve not heard the argument that the STEM fields are too time consuming for women. It certainly doesn’t hold water, either from an education or career perspective. It might, in someone’s head, matter in certain tech roles with their infamous on call requirements, but no more than medicine, law, or certain leadership roles. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/49 "2016-09-23T23:44:07Z")
I normally find ITR’s OPs reprehensible, but this one didn’t mention Obama once. His implications (essentially that feminists are idiots) are ridiculous. But the specific behavior described? I’m familiar with it. Two decades ago, as an undergrad, we read a book in a seminar called “Biopiracy.” The prof later apologized to me for assigning it and admitted he’d put it on the syllabus based on a colleague’s recommendation and hadn’t read it (dude, bad form). I came to seminar loaded for bear, with four well-researched refutations of specific points the author had made, each of which ranged from a misinterpretation of statistics to a borderline libelous lie about someone she disagreed with. After I presented my refutations, I asked what other folks thought, in good seminar form. One student launched into a rambling attack on me and my Western ideas of what constituted truth (the author is a woman from India). I was appalled and flabbergasted. It wasn’t until later that I figured out what was most objectionable: her implication that objective truth was only for white people, and that we shouldn’t expect brown people to be held to the same standards of, y’know, not telling lies about other people. It was one of the things that started moving me away from the edges of radical postmodern leftist thought. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2016, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/50 "2016-09-24T01:00:58Z")
> [@Redwing](#): > > I’ve not heard the argument that the STEM fields are too time consuming for women. It certainly doesn’t hold water, either from an education or career perspective. It might, in someone’s head, matter in certain tech roles with their infamous on call requirements, but no more than medicine, law, or certain leadership roles. I was refuting **Shodan** , who categorically stated that women don’t enter STEM fields because of math and time reasons. And yes, they are require grounding on math, but some don’t require much past calculus, which is already taught in many high schools. **Jackmanii** > [@](#): > > The latest statistics I’ve seen indicate close to half of all medical students are women, and something like 46% of all physicians in training are female. > Women are increasingly outnumbering men in veterinary medicine, which strikes me as a pretty demanding field. Exactly, so even in the more time-consuming or time demanding areas of medicine, the amount of women entering is increasing. And veterinary medicine is quite time-consuming, yet many studying it are women (AHEM!). Again, in some cases the time involved is not just training times (like doctors or veterinarians) but the demands and workload relative to their pay (nurses, and it can also be a physically demanding job). As to my previous post… could be that there may be problems, but I’m not an engineer. 😉 Still, this was one complain the junior faculty at the university I was complained about. Many old-school type that offered little exposure in terms of analysis and too much into rote memorization. And yes, I teach foundation courses and yes there are lots of memorization to do still. The idea in teaching is to try and place it in more practical terms or bring some situation where they can be applied, even in the beginning of the academic program. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2016, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/51 "2016-09-24T03:04:31Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > The opinion of Laura Parsons, graduate student, is not important. I agree. It’s mundane and pointless. But not unique or limited to totally irrelevant people. In the world of postmodernist philosophy, [Luce-Irigaray](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luce-Irigaray) is an important figure. She has a famous theory concerning fluid mechanics [summarized thusly:](http://www.math.tohoku.ac.jp/~kuroki/Sokal/bricmont/node17.html) The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Although men, too, flow on occasion – when semen is emitted, for example – this aspect of their sexuality is not emphasized. It is the rigidity of the male organ that counts, not its complicity in fluid flow. These idealizations are reinscribed in mathematics, which conceives of fluids as laminated planes and other modified solid forms. In the same way that women are erased within masculinist theories and language, existing only as not-men, so fluids have been erased from science, existing only as not-solids. From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders. It is, of course, true that not all feminist intellectual work consists of this sort of thing, but there’s enough to be amused by it. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2016, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/52 "2016-09-24T05:51:30Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > That doesn’t mean that men are inherently better at math. It could be that boys are assumed to be better at math and so are given more encouragement. Or girls are assumed to be more interested in reading and so are encouraged to just get their math work done so they can go back to reading their fun books. Also, there have been multiple studies done about how the knowledge of stereotypes by students and teachers affects students’ performances. [Here’s one discussion of it](https://www.natcom.org/CommCurrentsArticle.aspx?id=845): > > I’m a female engineer, but I think I was helped by the fact that my mom and her mom were both math majors, and my mom is a computer programmer. So I probably only learned the stereotype as a child about girls being bad at math after I already knew that obviously they weren’t since my mom and grandmother are super smart and great at math. So if you had given 2nd grade me and another equally smart 2nd grade girl a hard math problem, I might have struggled through and gotten an answer because I knew I could do it, and the other girl might have struggled and given up because she knew that math is hard and girls are bad at math. Somewhere there is what I find wrong with the approach proposed by the author quoted in the OP. The author appears to argue that expectations placed on women by society (and I’m just going to accept that for the sake of argument) keep them from going into STEM fields, therefore the study of those fields should change to be more in line with the aptitudes supposedly inculcated on women by those expectations. If I’d be a woman I’d be pretty pissed off at the condescension that permeates the proposal; and if I’d be in STEM academy I’d be pretty pissed off at the notion that my field of expertise should dance to the tune of an interloping ideology. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2016, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/53 "2016-09-24T05:53:17Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I normally find ITR’s OPs reprehensible, but this one didn’t mention Obama once. His implications (essentially that feminists are idiots) are ridiculous. But the specific behavior described? I’m familiar with it. > > Two decades ago, as an undergrad, we read a book in a seminar called “Biopiracy.” The prof later apologized to me for assigning it and admitted he’d put it on the syllabus based on a colleague’s recommendation and hadn’t read it (dude, bad form). I came to seminar loaded for bear, with four well-researched refutations of specific points the author had made, each of which ranged from a misinterpretation of statistics to a borderline libelous lie about someone she disagreed with. > > After I presented my refutations, I asked what other folks thought, in good seminar form. One student launched into a rambling attack on me and my Western ideas of what constituted truth (the author is a woman from India). > > I was appalled and flabbergasted. It wasn’t until later that I figured out what was most objectionable: her implication that objective truth was only for white people, and that we shouldn’t expect brown people to be held to the same standards of, y’know, not telling lies about other people. > > It was one of the things that started moving me away from the edges of radical postmodern leftist thought. Yep, that second to last paragraph is the sort of condescension I’m talking about. ---
**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 24, 2016, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/54 "2016-09-24T06:33:18Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I agree. It’s mundane and pointless. > > But not unique or limited to totally irrelevant people. In the world of postmodernist philosophy, [Luce-Irigaray](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luce-Irigaray) is an important figure. She has a famous theory concerning fluid mechanics [summarized thusly:](http://www.math.tohoku.ac.jp/~kuroki/Sokal/bricmont/node17.html) > > The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Although men, too, flow on occasion – when semen is emitted, for example – this aspect of their sexuality is not emphasized. It is the rigidity of the male organ that counts, not its complicity in fluid flow. These idealizations are reinscribed in mathematics, which conceives of fluids as laminated planes and other modified solid forms. In the same way that women are erased within masculinist theories and language, existing only as not-men, so fluids have been erased from science, existing only as not-solids. From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders. > > It is, of course, true that not all feminist intellectual work consists of this sort of thing, but there’s enough to be amused by it. Wow. What’s next - _“These two engineering plans for the hydroelectric dam project represent masculinity and feminity, respectively, because the 1st dam engineering proposal involves a longer water passageway as a conduit when the hydroelectric dam needs to release water - representing how the male anatomy has a longer urethra for relieving built-up fluid pressure within the bladder - and the 2nd hydroelectric dam proposal involves only a short release river passageway, representing how the female anatomy has only a short urethra?”_ ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2016, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606/55 "2016-09-24T06:41:40Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > And yes, science should be taught as the approach that leads to better understanding, through questioning and testing the ruling theory, rather than as a set relation of data to memorize. That’s not about science, it’s about teaching styles. Teachers I had (or, in one case, did not have thank the alphabet) who were all hell-bent on memorization: - most of my foreign-language teachers, - a lot of the mathematics teachers, - one of the other science teachers (specifically, Chemistry of Natural Products), - most of my history teachers, - one of my two philosophy teachers (specifically, the one who hated the Sciences, pure, applied or otherwise). It appears to be mostly a matter of the teacher himself not understanding the subject, therefore not being able to recognize it if the form in which he gets it back has been changed slightly. A minority do it just to be jerks. In Spain the two majors which heavily favor memorization over comprehension are Law and Economics. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-facts-are-oppressing-women/766606.md?page=2)