Gender imbalances do exist in STEM, and there’s no denying it. 22% of academics and only 9% of lecturers is clearly not equal. But why is this so when we have so many policies designed to encourage women into STEM? For years we have offered scholarships and had quotas, and yet for some reason STEM lacks women. It is argued that 50% of people are women, so it should be unbelievably self-evident that there should be balance, but it really isn’t.
There was once a case for gender quotas; when women were first being invited into academia and higher learning and stigma needed to be broken; but at this stage we must ask, when women now dominate fields such as nursing and biology, why do we continue with positive discrimination policies?
The problem maybe isn’t with STEM, but perhaps with the pursuit of equality. What if women simply don’t want to go into STEM and we’re forcing it on them in the name of equality? According to the US Department of Statistics women in STEM switch majors at a higher rate, so it’s clear they’re realising that maybe STEM wasn’t for them after being coerced into entering the field in the first place. The argument about there being a lack of women does not hold up when this lack of women existed in every other field at one stage, but many have swing completely around.
And what should we make of the disparity? Well, there was once a time when many academic fields faced similar gender imbalances. The first women to enter almost any field were faced with the same, or worse imbalances, that exist today in STEM. Women enter STEM at a higher rate than is natural, and there is a downward correction as women leave the field to pursue other interests. I would argue that these women who remain are, in fact, representative of the natural state of women in STEM after the exodus at undergraduate level where women are overrepresented; and this situation is created by the coercion pushing women into these fields.
And what has coerced them? The scholarships. The quotas. The knowledge that they will be given a leg up over male counterparts simply because of gender. The knowledge that women have a 2:1 advantage over men when applying for a job in STEM fields against men with the exact same qualifications, simply because they’re women.
Taking the “Fun” out of “Funding”
When it comes to funding, it is true that women receive less, but it is misinterpreted as to why.
Women are given an unfair advantage, and many women go further in STEM as a result of these positive discrimination policies. They get the Scholarships and the quotas give them a boost over their male counterparts.
Now, the people who lose out and have to make way are the least deserving (but still deserving) males, who have on merit earned their position; yet as the weakest of the bunch are cut adrift in order to allow women in. By losing the weakest of the males, you actually raise the standard of the male proportion, so not only is there an economic incentive to give women less grant money, you actually increase the quality of the male proportion and give incentive to give them more grant money.
Any worthwhile grant board should have an economist doing a Cost-Benefit analysis of any research and they will reach the conclusion that disparity in grants is not sexist but rather economic thinking. The solution is very simple: the policies designed to help women in the short run actually harm them in the long run. Abolish these policies; equalise the standard of men and women; then you will equalise the grant awards to men and women.
Paranoia
Women enter STEM expecting sexism because the narrative from people has been that it is sexist. The question they ask isn’t “is STEM sexist?”, but rather “where is the sexism?”.
The way a person, one who is expecting this sexism, will construe innocuous things like a lecturer’s tone is dangerous. They seek to find things to justify their paranoia and this fuels it further. As an apparent manifestation of this and the different narratives put forward in the media and how they are treated: in writing this article I have multiple times been ignored by members of the publication. I have answered every query they had about this article, and when I requested a source regarding one of the claims made in the original article, this was not provided and there was not even a response.
The claim was that women face a 30% pay cut, a comment made in the last line of the piece. This is simply a lie. This data simply does not control for other variables besides gender and when this is done the wage gap no longer holds up. Yet despite this being raised multiple times, no correction has been issued.
We have reached a stage in our Western society where we have overshot equality. Instead of accepting differences between genders, and allowing them to make their own decisions as to where they work or what they study, we architect an entire system to try push women into STEM, and we architect institutions dedicated to just this.
No longer a women’s issue
All of this happens to the detriment of men. Men now face institutional disadvantages in schools as boys and girls learn differently, (Pomerantz, Altermatt, & Saxon, 2002) but where we’re put into a system which often favours women, where women are showered with grants and scholarships and programmes which try to throw them into STEM, simply for being women. There are no programmes for men.
Are we to accept this? That we need is more of these horrible policies?
And what if we oppose? Well we’re patriarchal and don’t deserve a say because we can’t possibly understand women’s issues.
Well this is no longer a women’s issue. This is now much more a men’s issue as the traditional roles have flipped: girls do better in school, go to university more, graduate more and with higher grades, and in STEM have a 2:1 advantage when job seeking over men. Yet we are told this is not enough and that all fields are not equal, so the job isn’t complete. More must be done and we are to suffer for it.
STEM isn’t a last bastion to be stormed by feminism. If we continue as we are, STEM is going to be the victim of doomed social experimentation by the feminist left to its very detriment.
Edited 26/02/16
