Patriarchy Debate

attackfighter

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I found this video that represents at length the two sides to this debate. The question is "Why are there more men in certain fields of science (like engineering)?" Eliza takes the position that it is mostly due to the influence of a patriarchy, while Steve claims that it is mostly due to innate sex differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hb3oe7-PJ8

(Comments are disabled for some reason.)

What do you think?
 
One theory is that women attracted to patriarchs tend to hang around something a bit more alpha than STEM types, thus lowering the number of women willing to enter such fields.
 
I think the video may not be considering all the valid theories. It is basically arguing whether the sun revolves around the earth or if a guy in a chariot hauls it across the sky.
 
Please do not spam. Watch the video and discuss it.
The last time I spent over 2 hours watching a video someone posted here, the OP took off and never did answer my questions. So no, thank you, I would prefer to spend that time on other pursuits.

(I did watch a few minutes, and it really didn't grab my attention)
 
JollyRoger,
What valid theories is it missing?

The last time I spent over 2 hours watching a video someone posted here, the OP took off and never did answer my questions. So no, thank you, I would prefer to spend that time on other pursuits.

(I did watch a few minutes, and it really didn't grab my attention)

You don't have to watch it if you don't want to, but if you don't watch it then you shouldn't reply, as this thread is about discussing it and you can't discuss it very well if you don't watch it.
 
And why are there more women working in certain other fields than men?

Because Matriarchy?
 
Apparently, one cannot discuss very well even if they have watched it.

One man's spam is another man's valid theory.
 
Probably the patriarchy unless you think women are just plain stupider.
Not really. Why do more men fix cars? Because women aren't interested in boring cars (I'm not either, I don't get the appeal). Likewise most men have no interest in giving manicures (some might be down to do Brazillian waxes but most women would not be comfy getting them from men).

And why are there more women working in certain other fields than men?

Because Matriarchy?
Because, *gasp*, men & women are different! :run: (2nd time I used that smiley today, it should get more use! :))

I didn't watch the video, sorry, I'm sure its amazing but I've already watched videos of people arguing about the "patriarchy" and I generally find it as compelling as people arguing for invisible reptilians.
 
Because, *gasp*, men & women are different!

That's basically the argument that a Nobel Prize winner recently used about the presence of 'girls' in labs. The reason certain genders can be found more in certain fields is not 'cuz girls', but rather (as the 'cuz girls' indicates) preconceived ideas, which are (consciously or inconsciously) fed to children from a very young age. Simply put: the reason is tradition.

Patriarchy-matriarchy, however, are a set of ideas relating to how society should be governed. Not necessarily the same thing (although these also are traditional concepts). The Catholic church, for instance, is a patriarchal institution: no women are allowed to be priests, ergo they can't be elected pope either.
 
You don't have to watch it if you don't want to, but if you don't watch it then you shouldn't reply, as this thread is about discussing it and you can't discuss it very well if you don't watch it.
Fine. I will remove this thread from my subscription list and ignore it from now on.
 
Patriarchy-matriarchy, however, are a set of ideas relating to how society should be governed. Not necessarily the same thing (although these also are traditional concepts). The Catholic church, for instance, is a patriarchal institution: no women are allowed to be priests, ergo they can't be elected pope either.
The Catholic church is like the men's bathroom, women can't go in there but would they really want to?
 
The video is probably pointless if I cannot read the presentation slides that are helpful (27:00, 24:00). The second presentation doesn't seem to have a ton of statistics to jump out.

Just jumping around the video, I would assume any statistics presented at 20:00 (PhD) or 24:00 (top 1% 7th grader math performance) are irrelevant. Those are horribly representative of any wide-spread applicability to enrollment in universities. Various data shows there probably is gender biases at the far ends of the scale, but that's irrelevant to getting people to do some basic differential equations and mathematical/scientific skills that are needed to complete an undergraduate engineering degree.

The patriarchy absolutely is a very real fact for hard sciences and engineering in some countries throughout the world, particularly dominant in the middle eastern countries.

My 10 minutes of research shows that enrollment in Technical University berlin (TU berlin; 30,000 students) is overall is 67% male and 33% female, which would be a little bit better than US universities for m/f ratios (usually no higher than 25% female in hard sciences), but I did not find a quick detailed breakdown.

In that 10 minutes of research, I decided to google the netherlands and the university of amsterdam and their statistics seem a little different than what I know of the US but fairly consistent overall (I looked at Female ratio for: chemistry: 30-40% range; comp sci <10%; physics and astronomy 12-20%)

I googled University of waterloo (canada) too and that seems similar to US rates of mostly 5-20% or so for the "spring 2014 ENG" degrees awarded (engineering degrees).

my base US statistics is for a heavily male-dominated (but very large engineering university) Georgia tech. It has full breakdown every year, which in total the engineering is 27% female but that gets inflated by biology and industrial engineering. Industrial engineering does not require differential equations. I think most other engineerings run in the 10-20% female range.

I believe most US hard science or engineering majors at universities range in the 10-20% female, with biochem and biology being outliers (bio has >50% women, chemistry is fairly broad as it might refer to inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry (more bio focused), even "biochem" majors, etc, and range in demographics)

But, whenever this stuff comes up in US debates about engineering, I have never seen statistics of other reasonable industrialized countries. Although it is still male dominated, if the US is running at 10-20% and other countries are 20-30%, then obviously the gender factor does not account for the differences. It would be indicative of the US education system or culture sucking to produce female engineers.

If at the end of the day it'd split like 40-60 female to male due to biology, well, who knows. But people present garbage statistics about nobel prize winners or the top 10% of academia which literally has no bearing on any systemic educational and career patterns.
 
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