[QUOTE=Zyler;48927170]You haven't made an actual argument, you've just assumed things about what everybody has written without actually reading the posts (which you've admitted to) and then called everybody who disagreed with you sexist based on some strawman you've managed to construct through a lack of basic reading comprehension. [b]I'm asking if you have a mental disorder because you seem to lack basic reading comprehension.[/b]
Your mindless rambling is based on the false premise of what you think people in this thread have said, which is not what people have actually said. Based on that false premise, everything else you've managed to conclude is wrong.
In a more simple way:
Here's what people have said:
"There are less women choosing to go into STEM than men, maybe they have a preference of not going to STEM because it is needlessly stressful compared to other career choices that they prefer because they aren't stressful. That is maybe one possible reason why those individual people chose to make that individual choice."
Here's what you think people have said:
"You think that women are weak and stupid and unable to compete in the competitive environment of STEM"
Now, if you actually read my post and other people's posts, you'd have seen the bit where I said women usually do better than men in STEM environments and that they DO NOT have trouble in the competitive environment, you'd also see _Axel's post where he stated that it's a matter of personal preferences, not skill or competence.[/QUOTE]
I never said women don't do better in STEM than men, I don't know why you keep bringing that up. However you seem to be contradicting yourself on a similar point; you say that women have no trouble in a competitive environment (well yeah anyone sane would obviously agree with that - at least relative to men), but then you say that women do not have a high preference for STEM because it is "unnecessarily competitive and stressful" (your own words lol, in a previous post), and to hide your fuck-up you deliberately chose to use only 'stressful' and not mention 'competitive' in the 'what people have said' argument in the quoted post.
Saying STEM is unnecessarily competitive for women, implying it's not so for men, is implying that yes, women do have trouble in a competitive environment - relative to men at least. But that's not me saying that, that's you saying that. And I have the mental disorder?
And there's the point you keep on ignoring, you say (well not you, Axel said it but you're implying agreement with him about it) that women prefer not to go into STEM as a matter of personal preference. Which is true, yes. But do you want to know why women don't prefer to go into STEM? Because society today (wrongfully) still dictates that women apparently can't handle it, that's it's a man's job, that women who do it somehow don't meet societal norms, and also because women who work in STEM cop a heavy amount of sexual harassment from the male-dominated culture of STEM.
[QUOTE=Yahnich;48927213]im arguing that there's an issue that can be fixed because it's societal and not biological; whether it's because women are discouraged or men are encouraged. there has been a shitload of research into this and they still can't pinpoint the exact reason so i personally think everyone that's like NO ITS SEXUAL DIMORPHISM or NO LADIES JUST DONT WANT TO DO IT are sort of silly, especially the 2nd group because ladies not wanting to do stem is the problem that's being addressed.[/QUOTE]
Saying that "women choose not to go into STEM because they think it's too stressful" isn't saying that "Women choose not to go into STEM because they are biologically engineered to think it's too stressful". They think it's too stressful. why do they think it's too stressful? We don't know, it could be (and most likely is) social factors, it could be (but is pretty unlikely to be) biological factors, but simply stating "women choose not to go into STEM because they think it's too stressful" doesn't imply any sort of hypothesis as to a cause for "women thinking STEM is stressful", it's an observation without any kind of evidence pointing to either side of this debate. It doesn't tell us why women might think STEM is stressful, and I'm pretty sure some women do think that. The issue isn't whether or not people (both men and women) think STEM is stressful, it's WHY they think it's stressful.
It's understandable to be impassioned in the height of a furious debate, but try not to be so overzealous that you consider any suggestion of an idea or concept you either aren't familiar with or have seen before used in the opposite stance as an automatic drawing of a line in the sand.
Although arguing and yelling at people is all fun and good, the purpose of any online debate should be to come to some kind of compromise, or at least a better situation from where you started from. When you fly off the handle at people who actually agree with you, not only do you make it more difficult to reach a compromise, you also lose allies that you would otherwise have when it comes to bringing about any kind of positive social change.
[QUOTE]no you're not exactly agreeing because you're content with saying "oh women just don't want to go into stem" when personal choice is mostly influenced by society and upbringing; if women aren't choosing a certain degree that means in some form or another they're being discouraged from that degree; that's just how statistics works.
edit: i think this is the last thing i'll say about all of this because nothing fruitful is coming from it anyway[/QUOTE]
I'm not content with that answer, if you read my initial post and every post after that, I've attempted to give an answer as to why "women just don't want to go into stem". You've either not comprehended it or are willfully choosing not to. Here it is again: The female participation in STEM has gone down in the past 50 years, coinciding with the reduction in workplace conditions in major STEM professions. We know that the major STEM professions are incredibly stressful and that other career choices can net you as much income without as much stress. Under the presumption that women are choosing not to go into STEM courses in college and in university because they "think it's too stressful" in accordance with the worsening workplace conditions (and that is the percentage of female workers in STEM has decreased), why don't men "think it's too stressful"? I've said it before and I'll say it again: maybe it isn't a situation of women being underrepresented in STEM and more of a situation of men being over-represented, i.e. they are choosing to go down the sub-optimal career path that they find difficult, stressful, don't enjoy and don't make as much money in, while women are actually making the correct choice.
Nobody has actually responded to this idea, preferring instead to brush aside the one consistent thing I've said in this whole thread so far and put words in my mouth that I've never written. Anyone who reads what I've posted in this thread can surely see this, although I'm sure the above paragraph is too long to read for the same people who continue to misconstrue and misrepresent what I've written.
[editline]18th October 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Antdawg;48927241]I never said women don't do better in STEM than men, I don't know why you keep bringing that up. However you seem to be contradicting yourself on a similar point; you say that women have no trouble in a competitive environment (well yeah anyone sane would obviously agree with that - at least relative to men), but then you say that women do not have a high preference for STEM because it is "unnecessarily competitive and stressful" (your own words lol, in a previous post), and to hide your fuck-up you deliberately chose to use only 'stressful' and not mention 'competitive' in the 'what people have said' argument in the quoted post.
Saying STEM is unnecessarily competitive for women, implying it's not so for men, is implying that yes, women do have trouble in a competitive environment - relative to men at least. But that's not me saying that, that's you saying that. And I have the mental disorder?
And there's the point you keep on ignoring, you say (well not you, Axel said it but you're implying agreement with him about it) that women prefer not to go into STEM as a matter of personal preference. Which is true, yes. But do you want to know why women don't prefer to go into STEM? Because society today (wrongfully) still dictates that women apparently can't handle it, that's it's a man's job, that women who do it somehow don't meet societal norms, and also because women who work in STEM cop a heavy amount of sexual harassment from the male-dominated culture of STEM.[/QUOTE]
There's a specific point here that you're not getting. Just because somebody has a preference for not doing something, doesn't mean that they cannot do it or that they even necessarily believe they cannot do it. I'm sure you'd survive having your toenails pulled, but would you choose to do it if someone gave you the choice between it and eating an ice cream cone? Unfortunately, some people think that way about things like maths and science, they know that they can do it, they just find it to be a horrible, grueling experience and they'd much rather do other things that they enjoy. There's a lot of complex reasons why some people enjoy things and others don't, what we know for sure is that this difference isn't established by gender lines as (just as _axel has stated) if that were the case, there wouldn't be any women in STEM in the first place. Instead, what we've seen in the past 50 years or so is a gradual decrease in the percentage of women in STEM, even as the number of women in higher education has increased and overtaken the number of men in higher education. Coinciding with this decrease in female STEM graduates has also been a decrease in working conditions for people who work in STEM.
Office jobs are world renowned for being awful and horrendous to work in, given the choice I feel like most people would prefer not working at all as opposed to working in the majority of STEM jobs if they were to receive the same amount of money either way.
People do things they don't want to do because they feel like they have to, the keyword there being 'feel'. The actual underlying network of social stigmas and gender roles is a lot more complex then you're cracking it up to be.
The question we need to ask might not be why are there less women in STEM, but why are there more men in STEM considering the working environment is horrendous?
I'd like to reiterate that you don't actually disagree with me, you agree with everything I've written, you just think you disagree with me because you've deliberately misinterpreted what I've written in previous posts. Once again, nobody has responded to anything I've actually written, such as the alternate reasoning in my initial post that I've reiterated multiple times.
[QUOTE=Yahnich;48927213]If women aren't choosing a certain degree that means in some form or another they're being discouraged from that degree; that's just how statistics works.[/QUOTE]
...Or that to the contrary, without the changes the environment brings to their personal preferences, they naturally prefer other degrees? How exactly do you explain gender disparity being greater in more developed and egalitarian societies when it would be the opposite if those preferences were social constructs?
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