Women in math at BYU

[alas]

So, your biggest concern is bad journalism?

Given the clear biases in evidence and the stories women have shared you're most concerned and interested in bad journalism?

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I had a long post written, basically asking Jax what his point was. Then I read this and just delegated my post while laughing.

OK, problems with bad journalism...my mother and DIL are/were both journalists. I can understand how bad journalism gets under the skin. I have heard plenty of rants.

And by the way, I agree that there needs to be more done as far as studies on why women do not go into STEM. I don't think the kind that Jax wants is possible because of ethics. (I won't get into the ethical limits of studies/experiments in the social sciences, just that we do not mess with people's lives in double blind experiments) it is one of the limits on the social sciences, where we can't have the kind of rigorous study that Jax likes.

But there is a new study out. I can't link to it because iPads don't do that. But it basically says that lack of women in STEM is actually better in countries where women have fewer rights. In those countries 41% of women are going into STEM, because they can make better money. In countries where women have more rights, women are deciding to go into something else, even when they are good at STEM. According to ability tests, 41% of STEM positions should be women world wide. But in countries where women have more rights, if a woman is also good at something besides STEM, she goes not that instead. My question is why? What is making women turn away from STEM when they have a choice? For me it was pure sexism.

[Jeffret]

When women raise concerns about bias in certain fields it's interesting how often the response is heightened concern about bad journalism.

It's also interesting how high the bar is for women to prove their experiences.

I certainly recognize the need for good journalism and quality studies but it seems like there should also be some room for believing women. Or is that only worthwhile when enough of them speak up all at once? In the mouth of ten or more witnesses? Or a hundred?

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[Mad Jax]

So, your biggest concern is bad journalism?

Given the clear biases in evidence and the stories women have shared you're most concerned and interested in bad journalism?

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Bad journalism and bad arguments can do a lot of harm. Is this a really a misplaced focus? It's this kind of article that becomes ammunition as "dishonest sophistry" for people who wish to entirely deny the bias exists. I think it's important to respect the limits of one's findings and not be tempted to go beyond what one should.

And yes I do see that the limits are exactly as alas described. It would probably be unethical to test beyond what they did, but there are creative ways to look at bias, and at the way people respond, to give at least some indication that their perception matches reality. It usually takes pretty advanced neuroscience, from what I've seen. So I'm not criticizing them for "only" going as far as they did with their research (though as Reuben states, maybe including male counterparts as comparison would have been more beneficial). I'm criticizing them for drawing positive conclusions that their examinations don't validate.

If you really want to know why this is so important to me, then I suppose it will require revealing some pretty dark shit about myself, but here goes. I have to be absolutely humble and constantly vigilant to combat a mental illness which thrives on false belief. I have to fight daily to ensure none of certain malformed thoughts begin to creep in, because they can evolve into psychotic delusions. One of the most powerful therapeutic tools has been to follow strict philosophical methods of evaluating information. I have to armor myself with the truth, so to speak. I certainly don't do this perfectly, but I'm doing the best I can.

One side effect of this is that my personality has become particularly analytical at times. I'm always trying to determine if something being said, especially in a discussion involving science, has credibility. That aspect of my personality is going to occasionally bleed over into things like this. I hope that might explain why the writer's and researchers' epistemology is so much more important to me than addressing another element of the phenomenon.

I'm certain there was a better way I could have presented my objection, but the truth is I've sacrificed some of the warmth of my personality at times in order to be more coldly logical. I suspect that aspect of my personality came out here. So I regret if anybody felt I was being hard headed, or dismissive, but I omitted a large portion of my overall perspective because I didn't think it was useful. So hopefully in the future I won't come across as blind to other aspects of a phenomenon when I'm being acutely analytical about one element.

[alas]

When women raise concerns about bias in certain fields it's interesting how often the response is heightened concern about bad journalism.

It's also interesting how high the bar is for women to prove their experiences.

I certainly recognize the need for good journalism and quality studies but it seems like there should also be some room for believing women. Or is that only worthwhile when enough of them speak up all at once? In the mouth of ten or more witnesses? Or a hundred?

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I totally agree. But the bad journalism doesn't help. It overstated the results of the study, which is exactly what causes the kind of backlash we saw with Jax. And I agree with you that the bad journalism probably would have gone unnoticed if the study was about men. It seems like the only time the conversation turns into an argument about the specifics flaws in the study or the reporting of it is when the study shows something that those in power do not like. As an example, we never went off on this kind of tangents about John Dehlin's study of why people leave Mormonism. That had the exact flaws of this study, only nobody cared.

There is a good article on believing women over on the blog common consent. It starts with the idea that Jesus apostles did not believe Mary Magdaline when she reported the resurrection and goes into how women are not believed when they report rape or domestic violence or sexual harassment.

And Jax, I just read what you posted while I was writing and thanks for sharing. It does explain why you were going on about this stuff that I felt like everybody can already see. Yes, there were flaws in the reporting of the study and yes there are flaws in the study, but over all, I thought the study had a point that it felt like you were arguing with. Personally, it makes it so I understand you better, and if there is a next time with this sort of stuff, I won't be so hard on you.

[Jeffret]

That makes some sense, Mad Jax. It does demonstrate that we were talking about different things. When I sense that's what's going on, I try to reset the discussion by asking simple questions to try and re-establish a basis. Hence my question about your primary point.

I would say that a number of us, alas, myself, some others, thought you were attacking the idea the women experience bias and even attacking the women for saying so. That's not an unreasonable impression because that is what frequently happens to women whenever these types of issues are raised. I've observed it time and time again and I'm not a woman experiencing it.

On the other hand, you were very focused on examining the one particular article and study. Your points on that were definitely valid. Personally, I believe that one provides background and helps understanding, painting the background of a picture as it were, yet as principal evidence examined logically it is weak and hence unreliable. Further, I think you were focused on what you personally could accept as reliable evidence. You weren't necessarily trying to convince others or deny them their experiences. In that sense, I think your questioning and writing was more selfish or egotistical, focused on your own understanding and not denying or convincing others, something which I recognize is often the case with my thinking and writing. I write about what interests me. Sometimes I dig into one concept in a way that comes across as overly critical (i.e., logical or examining) to others.

[Mad Jax]

I would say that a number of us, alas, myself, some others, thought you were attacking the idea the women experience bias and even attacking the women for saying so. That's not an unreasonable impression because that is what frequently happens to women whenever these types of issues are raised. I've observed it time and time again and I'm not a woman experiencing it.

It's pretty easy to see if one opens their eyes to it. I saw it to some degree in the military, although there are some alternate "hypotheses" of why that is that I'm open to discussing if there's interest, but mostly I saw my own mother suffer it growing up. I was raised by a single mom who genuinely was the best property manager in all of Minnesota (she took multiple properties out of solvency and had them at 100% rental every month, often for years at a time. Nobody else can match her record). Yet she continuously had to answer to far less qualified men who couldn't just trust her numbers and held her back in a lot of ways.

When I'm very close to something, or inclined to believe a thing, I tend to be extra critical about my perception of that thing because I want my understanding of reality to match true reality as much as I possibly can. I've noticed that I tend to pick apart arguments for atheism, free market, legal gun ownership, low taxation, and even personal preferences (such as quality of my favorite films) more than I do something with which I'm inclined to disagree. But I usually don't publicly engage in those kinds of criticisms, so this was an unusual exception.