Comment on Transitioning in STEM
insaneinthemembrane@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoBefore university = the whole life lived as a girl before university is even in it. The whole time being held to a different standard, encouraged one way, discouraged another way, etc etc. Any interest or persuasion being dismantled and/or dismissed for decades before uni.
sudneo@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
But what you are saying doesn’t match much the data (at least in Italy). In Italy females consistently get higher grades than miles, in all levels of school, and they do that from other women teachers (including STEM subjects).
How this matches “being held to a different standard”, for example?
They are the vast majority of schools in humanities (languages, classical studies, etc.) and all “licei” (=high schools created with the purpose of forming the ruling class back in 1920s) and they are the minority only in technical schools (which are generally lower quality schools more oriented toward professions than university) and in the scientific high school.
This also doesn’t seem to suggest any encouragement or discouragement in one direction or another, BUT it does match perfectly the culturally rigid gender stereotypes about women being more creative and fitting roles of care.
Also worth noting that women attend university in a higher % (56%) compared to men (also a result of gender stereotypes IMHO) and with higher grades on average. They are also the majority of PhD students (59%).
So my question I guess would be: why medicine and psychology are mostly and overwhelmingly women faculties, while engineering etc. are the opposite?
I wouldn’t say “any”, but I would absolutely say that interests in fields that are traditionally male-dominated are discouraged for women and viceversa (I have written in another comment, the imbalance in educational science is even higher than the one in engineering).
So I do see gender roles, I do see cultural influences about what is " for men" and “for women”, I don’t see the different standard women are held up to.
ace_of_based@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
im sorry, i want to answer you but you need to rewrite that whole mess, it’s intolerably difficult to read (unless you’re really just tellin a woman “this unrelated data doesn’t match your life experience”).
that would be comically stupid and sexist, and proving OP right!
I must be missing something. Maybe you’re doing a bit of satire? Embracing the stereotype of “italians=super-sexist”?
naw. I gotta be reading it wrong.
please rewrite this in italian so i can see the nuance lost in the translation
sudneo@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
I am saying that the very relevant data (ironically, gathered as part of the respect-stop violence project) indeed doesn’t match that lived experience. Which means that perhaps that experience cannot be generalized?
If someone claims that women are held to a higher standard, I think asking “how is it possible that on average, at all levels, they get higher grades and they are the majority of students?” is a fair question. The hypothesis that women are held to a higher standard in this context would imply the obvious conclusion that only the “best” would make it, which is in direct opposition with the data that women are a substantial majority of students everywhere.
On the other hand I perfectly acknowledged that gender stereotypes exist and these do explain both sides of the equation that I presented with “unrelated data”: they explain both having a mere 13% of females in IT faculties and having 8% of males in education faculties. The same exact dynamic applies to males and females, which both - due to peer pressure, and fixed gender roles - end up being discouraged to pursue certain careers.
If “women get discouraged their whole life” was a generally valid statement, then asking “why then they are the majority of medicine students, a faculty with the toughest admission exam, a scientific faculty and also a long and hard one - 11 years in total” is also a valid question in my opinion.
So yeah, despite what you might think, while I have no interest to debate or invalidate one’s experience, maybe this cannot be generalized if there are quite glaring issues with statistical data. Why would you consider data about gender distribution in the education sector in Italy irrelevant in the context of gender dynamics in education (in Italy, since that’s what my comment discussed), is a mystery to me. It’s even more of a mystery considering that that very same data was gathered specifically within the contest of a project about women equality.
ace_of_based@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
No, it completely misunderstands ops point, and i am flabbergasted that you should double-down like this. Can you provide for me other meanings for ops point? what “held to a higher standard” might actually mean? Until you can tell me how “but girls grades were higher ipso facto they were not held to higher standards” your spurious refutation of ops point is dismissed.
i don’t believe you, because that’s exactly what you are doing. if you’re not interested, stop doing it?