Trump signs bill to encourage women in STEM fields

[rosebull]

Ok. You can make this claim, but as someone who spends basically all of their time in STEM research, I have yet to witness a single incident wherein a woman is facing hostility on the basis of their sex.

Women very rarely face hostility in any job, the whole situation is blown out of proportion. Does it happen? I'm sure i does. But the way people talk about it you would think it happens every where, anywhere, and all the time which is just not true.

[Wells]

That's kinda the point, though. Life - and especially the workplace - can be shitty for everyone.

Oh, you did something and your manager took credit for it, so that's misogyny? No, that's fucking called Tuesday for most people at their job.

So why is your problem with the women trying to do something about it and not the people harassing others in the work place?

[DSRilk]

Managers and co-workers were actively propositioning female employees. Get lost with this "bluh bluh everything is sexism now" garbage.

With the push for women to think more in terms of career and less in terms of marriage, the reality is that more people are going into their professional lives as singles. If they decide they want to marry (or just date), the main game in town (outside of skeezy clubs) is work. A manager has no business propositioning an employee - for sure. And if someone says "I'm not interested, let's just keep things professional," or the like, then after that they're off limits. However, if we just flat out eliminate flirting or propositioning, then we're basically eliminating the best place for people to find a significant other with common interests. Would it be possible to meet someone someplace else? Sure - if you make time, work hard at it, and get lucky - but to me, it seems silly to eliminate a core part of the human experience at a place where most of us spend over half our waking hours. To me, harassment should be defined as if it's your subordinate or if you've already been told no thank you.

[Wells]

With the push for women to think more in terms of career and less in terms of marriage, the reality is that more people are going into their professional lives as singles. If they decide they want to marry (or just date), the main game in town (outside of skeezy clubs) is work. A manager has no business propositioning an employee - for sure. And if someone says "I'm not interested, let's just keep things professional," or the like, then after that they're off limits. However, if we just flat out eliminate flirting or propositioning, then we're basically eliminating the best place for people to find a significant other with common interests. Would it be possible to meet someone someplace else? Sure - if you make time, work hard at it, and get lucky - but to me, it seems silly to eliminate a core part of the human experience at a place where most of us spend over half our waking hours. To me, harassment should be defined as if it's your subordinate or if you've already been told no thank you.

"How am I supposed to meet anyone" is a super fucking weird response to "hey stop asking the women you work with to have sex with you".

[Underverse]

I mean the whole thing was later backed up by a bunch of female engineers at UBER.
https://www.techcrunch.com/2017/02/2...h-sexism-here/

That's some evidence, but it's certainly not without bias; a group that calls themselves 'Lady Eng' backing up the statements of a female engineer is not surprising or unexpected. That isn't to say that things like this don't happen; but I would hesitate to make the claim that these problems are endemic to Uber, nevermind all of STEM, just on the basis of these stories that haven't in any way been verified by an objective source.

One point of concern is that many of the behaviors described are illegal. There is legal recourse here, but it doesn't seem to be taken. I'm not sure I understand why that's the case if we are to believe these tales.

[Underverse]

"How am I supposed to meet anyone" is a super fucking weird response to "hey stop asking the women you work with to have sex with you".

I don't think you addressed the point he was making. Should individuals not be allowed to approach others and speak to them?

[Enthusiastic Steward]

That's kinda the point, though. Life - and especially the workplace - can be shitty for everyone.

I know, I was agreeing with you.

[NED funded]

That's some evidence, but it's certainly not without bias; a group that calls themselves 'Lady Eng' backing up the statements of a female engineer is not surprising or unexpected. That isn't to say that things like this don't happen; but I would hesitate to make the claim that these problems are endemic to Uber, nevermind all of STEM, just on the basis of these stories that haven't in any way been verified by an objective source.

One point of concern is that many of the behaviors described are illegal. There is legal recourse here, but it doesn't seem to be taken. I'm not sure I understand why that's the case if we are to believe these tales.

I suppose most of them don't want to make a fuss out of it. Its just easier and quicker to quit and go to another company that treats women better.

[DSRilk]

"How am I supposed to meet anyone" is a super fucking weird response to "hey stop asking the women you work with to have sex with you".

I met my wife in college many decades ago. I do, however, know a great number of WOMEN that are themselves trying to meet people at work for the very reasons I describe. But yes, in a crude way, that's what it comes down to - we are social creatures, and one of the most fundamental drives for (virtually) ALL of us is sex. The idea that we should all just be nothing more than cogs in the machine while at work is absurd to me. If someone asks you out at work, how big a deal is it to simply say "I'm not interested" or "I prefer to keep my personal life at home" or something equivalent. The reality is that the vast majority of us take our personal lives with us to work. We share stories about our kids while waiting for everyone to get on conference calls. We become good friends with people at work. We find gaming buddies, racquetball partners, and such at work. If someone says "no thanks," you don't bring it up again. But somehow the idea that you ask a co-worker if they're interested in having a drink with you... that's harassment? To me, harassment starts once you pester me with personal stuff after I've asked you to stop. No matter what it is.

[Mad_Murdock]

I'm looking at it as we need to have fewer people doing things like pursuing their doctorate in medieval studies. If you're going to try and shift people from those areas they have to go somewhere, and STEM makes the most practical sense moving forward.

The term we should "push women into X", is hopefully a loose of the word push. We should find ways to encourage them to give it a good look. Unless there is some strong data, other than "There aren't many women here, so that's proof there is a problem". I would need to see some hard data that women are being harassed or discourage out of the STEM fields versus women just have different interests than men in their educational pursuits.

I think it's tip toeing towards sexist to imply we need to push them into the STEM fields, because they aren't smart enough to choose what interest them.

I get that degrees in Basket weaving and interior design don't have much value, I'm just not sure people who choose to get a degree in Medieval folk dance are ever going to be interested in the STEM fields

[NED funded]

I don't think you addressed the point he was making. Should individuals not be allowed to approach others and speak to them?

I mean the answer of the guy has little to do with what wells is saying. It kinda feels like:

Wells: Stop asking your co-worker to have sex with you
Guy: Are we not allowed to speak to our co-workers?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Unless he plans on increasing funding, encouraging scholarships, giving companies incentive, or increasing federal pay, theres nothing he can do.

This is just a bunch of baloney lip service. The women that want to go into STEM are already going into STEM.

My uni had all of that then some - everything women only - and we still had about a 1:50 ratio in the electrical engineering courses. If they hadn't crammed the new-fangled it-economic hybrid courses into our faculty building we'd probably had gotten away with relabling the women toilets; without anyone noticing :P.

Well as long as he doesn't go down the retarded affirmative action path and demands a quota (not sure how that would work though .. since many STEM fields already take anyone they can get) I don't care. Pointless lip service is en vogue and as long as he doesn't damage something in the process of fucks up funding...

[Underverse]

I suppose most of them don't want to make a fuss out of it. Its just easier and quicker to quit and go to another company that treats women better.

If it's easier to quit a well-paying job and find a new job, then perhaps the negative value of these events is not so large, and perhaps it doesn't really matter to them.

There's also a financial incentive to report harassment, as damages will be awarded and costs will be covered. Awards can be between $7,000 and $40,000. It doesn't seem likely that someone who has experienced significant harassment, and is reasonably okay with their job, will pass that up.

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I mean the answer of the guy has little to do with what wells is saying. It kinda feels like:

Wells: Stop asking your co-worker to have sex with you
Guy: Are we not allowed to speak to our co-workers?

No see Wells was pushing the commentary to the extreme and in the process committing a fallacy. I was just calling him out on it. This is the argument the original poster was making:

If someone asks you out at work, how big a deal is it to simply say "I'm not interested" or "I prefer to keep my personal life at home" or something equivalent.

Which has nothing to do with someone overtly asking female coworkers to have sex with them.

I think the bigger issue here, though, is how people are defining harassment. I'm in favor of a definition of harassment that requires knowledge of intentions. As in, if someone asks another person something once, that isn't harassment. If they do so again after being asked not to, that is harassment. The lines get blurry around social convention; whether or not to include social conventions in the definition of harassment is probably a separate but worthwhile discussion.

[Barnabas]

And how is a bill going to do that?

Pretty much like any other bill. The democrats make it anti discriminatory and based on gender equality. So schools have to recruit more women to show up to class and stay in those programs. They use the same carrot like hinging this on federal funding if you participate and follow the rules. It gets signed and goes into law. Par for the course.

[Teebone]

Hey guys! I just wrote this bill that appeals to a popular opinion just like Uncle Puttie told me too! You believe me more than the media now, right?!?

[Barnabas]

Why shouldn't women just do what they want to do...

In hopes they take this bait and get higher paying jobs to close the wage gap some more. All because every man saying this for a decade hasn't worked.

[Teebone]

Why shouldn't women just do what they want to do...

This. /10char

[melodramocracy]

The "how" was rather absent in all that talk, though if it's effective, it's a good thing.

I wonder what the employment / college education ratio is for males in those fields?

[Enthusiastic Steward]

The term we should "push women into X", is hopefully a loose of the word push. We should find ways to encourage them to give it a good look. Unless there is some strong data, other than "There aren't many women here, so that's proof there is a problem". I would need to see some hard data that women are being harassed or discourage out of the STEM fields versus women just have different interests than men in their educational pursuits.

I think it's tip toeing towards sexist to imply we need to push them into the STEM fields, because they aren't smart enough to choose what interest them.

I get that degrees in Basket weaving and interior design don't have much value, I'm just not sure people who choose to get a degree in Medieval folk dance are ever going to be interested in the STEM fields

I should have clarified better. I wasn't necessarily thinking of 'pushing women' into STEM, but rather finding a way to 'steer more students in general', because I think that's what should happen. I agree that someone gunning for a doctorate in medieval studies or [insert overly specific liberal arts degree with little practical application beyond teaching said subject] isn't probably going to be that interested in STEM. To me the issue is more that we are increasingly churning out more liberal arts degrees than there are liberal arts jobs and, with those fields becoming saturated, students feel pressured to pursue higher degrees to stand out. Its a catch-22, as there simply aren't a lot of jobs for masters/doctorates in those fields and so then you've got people paying for a degree they don't need and in the end over-educating themselves to being overqualified for positions or, alternatively, ending up in a career completely unrelated to their degree.

To me its not about pushing women into STEM so much as finding a way to reduce the saturation in the liberal arts field and finding ways to encourage people to pursue other courses. Incentivising STEM is just one way of doing that.

NO, this is the internet, you can't AGREE with someone. What the hell are you thinking?!

I'm sorry, its been a long day, I wasn't thinking.
You are WRONG and your opinion is stupid. Here is unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence which PROVES that I am RIGHT and you are a BAD PERSON and [insert political affiliation] [insert pejorative].

[NED funded]

If it's easier to quit a well-paying job and find a new job, then perhaps the negative value of these events is not so large, and perhaps it doesn't really matter to them.

There's also a financial incentive to report harassment, as damages will be awarded and costs will be covered. Awards can be between $7,000 and $40,000. It doesn't seem likely that someone who has experienced significant harassment, and is reasonably okay with their job, will pass that up.

- - - Updated - - -



No see Wells was pushing the commentary to the extreme and in the process committing a fallacy. I was just calling him out on it. This is the argument the original poster was making:



Which has nothing to do with someone overtly asking female coworkers to have sex with them.

I think the bigger issue here, though, is how people are defining harassment. I'm in favor of a definition of harassment that requires knowledge of intentions. As in, if someone asks another person something once, that isn't harassment. If they do so again after being asked not to, that is harassment. The lines get blurry around social convention; whether or not to include social conventions in the definition of harassment is probably a separate but worthwhile discussion.

This what wells answered to:
"The problem with this stuff is that it's never going to be "Fixed" because "I'm a woman and I disapprove of this situation/person/action/whatever." is pretty much all you need to claim "sexism" anymore."

Then the other dude came up and said aren't we allowed to speak to our coworker?

And given that in this specific case there were structural problems doesn't seem like an easy case easy 40k. Also it matter to them if they quit their job. They chose a probably lower position.