We know that women students and staff remain underrepresented in Higher Education STEM disciplines. Even in subjects where equivalent numbers of men and women participate, however, many women are still disadvantaged by everyday sexism. Our recent research found that women who study STEM subjects at undergraduate level in England were up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism. The main perpetrators of this sexism were not university staff, however, but were men STEM degree students.
The undergrad boys in STEM I swear have never met a woman aside from their mothers. No, please don’t follow me home. Please don’t buy me food because I was next to you in line. Please don’t follow me into a store so you can buy me anything I’m purchasing. You are not invited into my conversation because you think I’m pretty, even if you just want to interrupt to tell me I’m pretty and you want to take me on a date. You are not allowed to hug me and hold me as long as you want just because you want to and it feels good for you, I didn’t want a hug and I didn’t know you. It isn’t cute for you to take things from me and play keep away because you are stronger and taller, it makes you a bully.
Teachers: please don’t ignore me when I try and participate or ask a question. I’ve gotten Cs with no explanation, no marks aside from the grade itself. When I check other’s work, theirs is written up with mistakes and they have a higher grade. Honestly that was just one teacher in an undergrad, the rest were pretty awesome, or at least not sexist.
My CS classes were 90% male, and every professor was male, too. They all genuinely enjoyed my participation, and it was the only environment where I wasn’t objectified or disrespected. Same with my coworkers (again 90% male) when I went into the FAANG workforce; the men were happy to see women excel in a previously male-only field.
The general public was a different story until recently. Women were thrilled, a disturbing number of men refused to listen to me.
I’m not even involved in a STEM job any longer but I still see tons of STEM employed men spewing manosphere bullshit all the time. I’m also starting to see more and more well educated, articulate women parroting it. These women also tend to be overwhelmingly conservative in their political positions, too. Especially well educated white women.
As a woman engineer, yeah we’re probably disproportionately responsible. I’m sure science and math have more sexism than say art, but biology has to treat women better than engineering I assume.
Not to mention that gay students are more likely to face homophobia. It was rampant at my uni. We could not keep any sort of gay-related posters up without them getting ripped off and trampled within hours. Which in retrospect is wild because there were so many of us, and more who came out years later. lol
We coulda told you that without a study bruh
STEM (both technical university and workforce) has been a cesspit of misogyny from my personal experience.
I studied at the Technical University of Denmark and there was so much sexism towards the women there. I was oblivious to it the first year, and then got into a friend group of primarily women. It was mind-blowing hearing their stories, and of the way that university management and leaders shut them down every time they formally brought up the issue. There was (and still is) serious cover-ups of multiple rape cases.
Don’t think it’s not happening just because you don’t hear about it. People in power are actively trying to keep this quiet, and it’s working.
They’re grouping non-binary people as female and pretending like this isn’t a problem for presenting a statistical analysis?
Who the fuck gave the go ahead for doing this research?
There should be separate reports on non-binary discrimination and female discrimination not combining the two and labeling them women. (in case you’re unaware, males and females can both be non-binary so grouping non binary people from either sex into “women” completely de-legitimizes the research)
Completely unprofessional.
The conclusion are the same that you group or not : men in stem are male chauvinists who doesn’t tolerate those not like them and feel the need to oppress those.
How is it unprofessional? It’s just a different data set, there’s nothing inherently professional or not about it.
Another way to say it would be “non-male” sexual discrimination. Which makes perfect sense given who are generally the target of that type of discrimination.
It’s just a statistic, dude. If you’re looking at it as something it isn’t, that’s on you.
Making wide claims on entire groups based on inferential data is inherently unprofessional. They didn’t stop at observing they’re making claims without evidence to back it up.
How one person feels about something does not automatically mean that someone was intentionally or even unintentionally hurting them.
That is the issue at heart here.
Non-binary people can experience sexism regardless of how they’re born though. Your suggestion that just acknowledging that non-binary people exist without being disrespectful means research should be ignored is making the researcher’s point for them.
Did you read what I wrote or just immediately respond the second I said ‘non binary’? Also the fact you’re making this statement also indicates you didn’t read the source material at all.
I said, in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, that they classified non binary people as women.
Your clear lack of reading comprehension is absolutely not my fault.
There’s no need to be disrespectful to me. I read you. I read your source you linked. I read the original article. You’re the only one that said anything about grouping non-binary people as women. Did you read the article? Clearly the people voting you up and me down didn’t. Make something else up to get outraged about.
I said, in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, that they classified non binary people as women.
Except no, they didn’t. I know this because we are having this conversation. They are grouped together in this statistic, but they make it very clear that they did that, and what % of the block were non-binary.
There’s nothing wrong with what they did. Nobody is trying to trick anyone, they are very transparent about including non-binary people (people who also experience discrimination).
I know you want so bad to be a victim, but men don’t experience sexual discrimination in STEM. Anyone in a STEM career can tell you that.
Ah, so you don’t actually care about the research, the statistics or the facts, you would prefer to try and turn this into a discussion about personal problems than facts.
I’ve no interest given you are likely not in a STEM education or profession and given your notes here, likely wouldn’t make it far even if you tried.
Objective interest and observation is vastly more important than the individual, and instead of approaching it from a statistical and facts based approach you’re attempting to twist what I’ve said into some kind of rhetorical attack on women.
I guess it would make you feel better to believe I’m a man that hates women, but, tragically for you, I have XX chromosomes so your incompetent attempt to present me as the problem in this scenario falls short, especially considering I have been in STEM for the past 20 years both as a student and now a professional academic.
Your personal problems with the materials are ultimately immaterial when compared to the concerns I laid out.
I assume next you’ll start going “the jews are keeping women down”? Or maybe “the patriarchy is the problem, lets ignore the fact women on average choose caring professions over STEM professions”.
At no point did I say the abuse and discrimination wasn’t there, I specifically noted that more research is required to figure out “why” it is there, and not pretend like it’s just “white men keeping women down”.
I understand nuance can be hard, but if you read enough books you’ll get it eventually, I promise.
Nobody asked about your chromosomes. Nobody cares. That shouldn’t matter if what you’re saying has value. That’s kinda the whole point of discussing sexism. For someone talking about rationality you’re acting like you’re allergic to hearing other people’s points. You instantly resort to ad hominem attacks, put words in other people’s mouths and spew the most toxic shit. It’s pretty sad that this garbage gets upvotes on this Lemmy. Get off your porn account and get some sleep.
Way to miss the point and prove an ample example of incompetence.
Such experiences included sexist microaggressions and stereotyping; such as questioning women’s academic legitimacy,
That’s the core of a STEM degree. You are constantly challenged about your conclusions. That’s not sexism, that’s how science works.
Other types of sexism include disbelief when a woman explains their experiences and baselessly denying evidence they present to support their claims.
Which proves my point. I question the data, I’m a sexist pig. It’s a hard field when your data is shaky.
It’s sexist if you don’t look further into the claims, instead just relying on your immediate assumptions about them being false.
If you immediately assume women are lying about experiencing sexism, and you don’t look into it further at all, and your reasoning is based solely on them being women as opposed to men, then yeah I’d say that’s pretty sexist. I’m not sure how someone could think otherwise.
I didn’t make any assumptions. By default, the statement made in the paper is not sexist.
By making assumptions, you bring in your bias and sexism. You just made 3 or 4 to justify your position
I abhor sexism and racism and what I say next may sound like both of those things but what if women and POC are worse at math than Tall White Guys®?
Should we make it even harder for them to access STEM fields? My workplace is a total sausage fest and I desperately seek the touch of wamman.
There can’t be many places in uni where women are outnumbered by men. It seems like that are taking a majority and trying to make out they are not the minority.
They aren’t talking about university as a whole. They aren’t talking about courses where men are massively outnumber by women. It seems they are using the one group of people where women come off worse than men to fit a narrative.
Either use the data from all the the university or not at all. Otherwise it’s data selection and biased.
Also the self reported sexism is very tiring because it in itself is biased. You hear it all the time something like Woman A : I get so much sexism of man A. He always talks over me.
Man b: yea man A is an arsehole. He talks over everyone, I don’t think he can help kt.
Yet you use that data and it looks like sexism because it is self reported. It’s not, I’ve noticed many women struggle in loud environments, that’s not sexism if she is treated the same as everyone else and just struggles with it.
I’m curious if they asked the men if they’d experienced sexism too. Most stem subjects are predominantly female so this seems to be a study seeking an answer that suits a narrative.
STEM is dominated by men. Especially the workforce. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/. About 50% of women that take STEM majors switch to non-STEM majors, while about 35% of males switch. This is a Yale source, though.
You’re being disingenuous. The study posted relates to sexism at university where stem subjects are predominantly female.
Workforce stats /= University stats which I think you’re aware.
Source? The Yale link above specifically mentions:
Nationally, women make up 57.3% of bachelor’s degree recipients but only 38.6% of STEM bachelor’s degree recipients.
Anecdotally, I was in a STEM-focused school and major over 20 years ago, and it was overwhelming male-dominated. One of my colleagues graduated less than 10 years ago, and her experience was not dissimilar. She had to deal with quite a bit of sexism too, unfortunately.
Your own damn link contradicts that bullshit stem bachelor degree stat.
I’d search for another but people shooting themselves in the foot amuses me to no end 😂
What are you even going on about? It literally says:
Women represent 57.3% of undergraduates but only 38.6% of STEM undergraduates
That means women are obtaining most of their degrees via non-STEM studies.
Women represent 52% of the college-educated workforce, but only 29% of the science and engineering workforce.
And that is reflected in the study’s figures for employment as well.
I’d search for another but people shooting themselves in the foot amuses me to know end
Well let’s look over the score here. Someone has provided two different links to back up their argument and you’ve provided… Oh look, none. You’re making claims and pointing out things that clearly do not exist or are anecdotal. Nothing you have done in the last three comments indicates to anyone that any of us should take anything you have to say with any kind of value.
So I guess you are amused to know [sic] end, but a point or logical argument you have not made. But hey if you thinking you took the W here and that keeps you quiet, then good job you totally owned everyone here. Amazing wordsmithing.
Your Yale link is nonsense as I think you’re aware. Your original link shows a closer stat to reality though it’s based on 2020 data - currently stem is predominantly female.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6759027/
Interesting; you have to dig past the usual misandry sites to find an impartial source but Pew research found 53% of stem graduates female in 2018 and rising.
You can also just check unis individually.
Well I mean, do you read the links you provide?
While women now account for 57% of bachelor’s degrees across fields and 50% of bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering broadly (including social and behavioral sciences), they account for only 38% of bachelor’s degrees in traditional STEM fields (i.e., engineering, mathematics, computer science, and physical sciences; Table 1).
There’s where your 50% comes from. And as you can see, your link also aligns with the 38.6% previously mentioned.
See? Now was that hard? See how once you explained yourself we could clear up the confusion you were having? Nothing wrong with that, easy to be confused by the various terms that are being tossed around.
Dude is crying about misandry. 🎻
Interesting; you have to dig past the usual misandry sites to find an impartial source but Pew research found 53% of stem graduates female in 2018 and rising
I mean, at this point you’re just cherry picking and not doing all that well with it. As indicated from, again YOUR source.
The gender dynamics in STEM degree attainment mirror many of those seen across STEM job clusters. For instance, women earned 85% of the bachelor’s degrees in health-related fields, but just 22% in engineering and 19% in computer science
That lines up with the whole thing I had mentioned here. You keep wishing otherwise, but you also keep providing evidence to the contrary.
So I mean at some point I guess you’ll read your own sources OR you won’t. But the sources you keep providing agree with the original statement that women are under represented in traditional STEM studies. So I mean you square that with yourself however you want.
Most stem subjects are predominantly female
Source?
That seems to say that there is a slight over-representation of women in STEM (degrees earned) overall but only because of a single subject/job-cluster, “health-related”, with a slight to very large under-representation in all others.
No “predominant” anywhere.(well maybe health-related)Yep, pretty much. Slightly more women in stem these days and rising.
