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from the this-will-not-be-controversial-oh-no-sir dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
"Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post has 'A message to the nation's women: Stop trying to be straight-A students.'
In her analysis of others' findings, she writes of a discouragement gradient that pushes women out of harder college degrees, including economics and other STEM degrees. Men do not seem to have a similar discouragement gradient, so they stay in harder degree programs and ultimately earn more. Data suggests that women might also value high grades more than men do and sort themselves into fields where grading curves are more lenient.
'Maybe women just don't want to get things wrong,' Goldin hypothesized. 'They don't want to walk around being a B-minus student in something. They want to find something they can be an A student in. They want something where the professor will pat them on the back and say "You're doing so well!"'
'Guys,' she added, 'don't seem to give two damns.'
Why are women in college moving away from harder degrees?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by velex on Wednesday March 12 2014, @08:04PM
The trouble with your argument is that you fail to take into account the effects of socialization. There is no biological reason why female-type brains should prefer humanities for example to STEM. Look over at the Middle East. You'll find plenty of cis women over there studying STEM. Then look back over here. There are plenty of cis women who succeed in fields such as medicine and law where there's $$$ to be had. Then take a closer look. There are plenty of trans women (who have the same kind of brain) who go into STEM. I don't find the argument that somehow the female mind is predisposed against fields that have objectively right and wrong answers such as STEM by way of biology to be convincing.
So, this is kind of a weak point on my part due to lack of evidence, but I honestly wouldn't know where to get the evidence. I have to wonder what the difference is then between cis women and trans women over here. Why do trans women succeed at STEM while cis women utterly fail? The only two variables that jump out at me are socialization and access to entitlement programs (easy access that cis women have to starting families and thereby gaining social status when they're not even old enough to buy a drink). Socialization is probably the stronger factor.
The question I had while I was reading TFA (I know, heresy) was, "So when does my entire gender caste [my own term to include anybody assigned the male gender at birth--by definition rapists the lot of us] get blamed for this problem?" Apparently, TFA doesn't attempt to do so. I've noticed a bit of a shift away from arguments from victimhood, so perhaps there's progress being made on the part of cis women to address their problem of why none of them do STEM.
What I'm waiting for is for cis women to start looking at mothers and grandmothers as culprits. There's way too much unjustified blame placed on cis men and trans women (the male "gender caste" as it were). According to feminism, anyone assigned the male gender is automatically responsible when little Susie gets a dollhouse or a Malibu Stacey for Christmas. The thing that cis women have utterly failed to do so far in their accusations to look at just who is insisting on these gifts. Perhaps, one day, cis women will realize that by and large cis men really don't give a shit about what toys their daughters get, but it's cis women who are insisting on the dollhouse, the long hair, and telling their daughters both explicitly and by example that "math is hard."
Too many cis women have told me that math is hard for me to care to argue anymore. I hope one day that cis women will realize that anyone and everyone assigned the male gender at birth cannot be held collectively and severally accountable for the words coming out of their own mouths.