[smt88]

I think the implication is that the pressure is amplified for women in male-dominated situations and/or that the game is rigged. As a man, there's almost nothing you can do in your career where you gender works against you. Society's bias is that men are more competent, and it's been demonstrated in experiments many times (even among women!)

I've heard many men express vocal shock upon hearing that a good PR (or whole project) was written by a woman. The game is definitely still rigged to varying degrees in programming.

[pbhjpbhj]

>Society's bias is that men are more competent, and it's been demonstrated in experiments many times (even among women!) //

I'll have to read your citations to be sure [hint, hint; ie citations please] but presumably this is context sensitive.

I've been mocked for being able to make a hot drink by a group of women ("Wow, a man who can make their own cup of tea!") and I've also been discriminated against at work ("Can we have the lady please" - I'm the one with the greater experience but it's in an area related to child care and so I'm assumed to be here to help my female colleague). Doesn't bother me, it's pretty petty after all, but it happens and it doesn't look like people assuming I'm more competent because of my sex; perhaps I'm mislead.

As a father I also get remarks like "do you know where his mum is" when the baby is crying ... (and no it's not because they know the baby needs feeding).

[smt88]

Citations below. It's very, very easy to Google these, by the way. There are literally decades of research that, all things equal, women are perceived as less competent, less hire-able, and less intelligent than men.

I agree that there is bias against men when it comes to domestic and caretaking tasks. The point that people are trying to make is that the discrimination against men is far less painful.

Your examples are actually perfect. They're small issues that didn't bother you. But what if you're a single mother trying to get a promotion? That bias could affect where your kids go to school, how much you save for retirement, and other vitally important parts of your life.

A really important note: we'd rarely discuss inequality in STEM fields if those weren't some of the best-paying and most sought-after jobs at the moment. Context and circumstances do matter here. There are certainly issues of discrimination against men that are important (men are less likely to seek mental health care because it's not "manly" to have feelings or be "weak"). But those things are also caused by men, aren't they? Are women the drivers of any seriously harmful discrimination against men? (I'm genuinely asking here.)

The overall point I'm trying to make is that bias against women happens in ways that have a huge impact on their lives, and bias against men (while still a problem!) happens in ways that harm us far less.

That's all moot, though: if we move toward gender equality, all of the discrimination should diminish. Men and women will be affected positively.

Copious citations:

1a. (writeup) http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/02/11/male-biology-stude...

1b. (study) http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

2. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474

3a. (writeup) http://www.amazon.com/Blindspot-Hidden-Biases-Good-People/dp...

3b. (video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL9__gD88xk

3c. (study) http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~banaji/research/publicati...

3d. (study) http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~banaji/research/publicati...

3e. (many more studies) http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~banaji/research/publicati...

4a. (writeup) http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/stu...

4b. (study) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109

5. (research done by my incredibly smart friend showing that the gender wage gap is about $.10 on the dollar when controlling all possible variables) https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2013/04/0...

[pbhjpbhj]

>I agree that there is bias against men when it comes to domestic and caretaking tasks. //

That was the point that needed citations, that there are biases in both directions. What also comes through in your cited studies is that in science the biases are across sexes and other demographics (see eg 4b. where neither faculty, tenure, sex, nor age was correlated for the person exhibiting the bias against [fake] female applicants). This conflicts with the rhetoric that it's a male vs. female problem.

There are biases against people that aren't perceived as belonging to a group naturally predisposed to a particular activity and these biases are inherent to all people? But you take from this "women are perceived as less competent" which is sexism; you've taken half of the result - people are prejudiced against others from groups they expect to be less competent. By re-couching the result you're just going to introduce a whole new load of biases, how does that help us towards equality of opportunity.

>The overall point I'm trying to make is that bias against women happens in ways that have a huge impact on their lives, and bias against men (while still a problem!) happens in ways that harm us far less. //

Bias against some men, bias against some women. Bias against people based on irrelevant factors isn't useful; completely accepted. It's not helpful in particular to say - we must focus on biases that appear to affect women because men [in general] get an easy ride of things; much of the time that's not going to help an individual fighting against bias.

You say biases against women are more harmful. Tell that to a primary teacher who's regarded with extreme distrust based on his sex alone to the point of being assumed to be a paedophile. Maybe it's worse if someone thinks you can't program.

In short, the idea that adding further discrimination will somehow reduce naturally occurring biases is completely unconvincing to me. But then I don't think we need more of $sex in $profession but instead that all people should be provided with equal educational opportunities and opportunities to enter all professions.

Looking at law in the UK (https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/Law-careers/Becoming-a-solicit...) we see more women being accepted on university courses, more women entering the profession at a slightly younger age than men. Overall there are 51% male and 49% female registered as qualified solicitors; in Scotland 64% entering the profession in 2015 were women [ethnic minorities being over-represented wrt the general population]. Does the legal profession need to start discrimination in favour of [indigenous] men ... I don't think so, I can't see how discrimination leads to a level playing field at all.

Now in law a lot of the top positions are predominantly men, that seems to be an age thing, we can't expect society to change overnight. Indeed if women continue to chose to have and raise children we'd expect a slight imbalance in favour of men [vs. the proportion entering the profession as a whole] all things being equal.

Re your 5. citation the wage gap in the UK for the young favours women. In my city women in full-time employment earn 7% more than men across all age groups. The problem then is that young men in my city are nonetheless discriminated against in favour of young women because "[men have|there is] a bias against women and so we need positive discrimination to give girls a chance" (which I find offensive to the young women and young men). So we have special women only business events, girls only tech events, and the like. Locally I'd expect them to push the gap even more in favour of girls/women. Here this is largely related to the 'hard industries' having collapsed and removed the availability of jobs that boys are interested in doing. In the UK as a whole 20% more men are unemployed than women (https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin...).

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Some more general notes on your citations:

1a. Had a discriminatory assumption that because a result suggested a perception bias amongst biology students then the bias in classes with a greater proportion of males would then have a greater perceived bias; it may be true but it was not a claim based on the results of their study. It seemed particularly jarring when talking about bias that those performing a study would jump to a conclusion based on prejudiced stereotyping - I'm not saying it wouldn't be found to be true, but it might not be. That sort of attitude is toxic IMO.

3c. Looked at perception of whether men were more likely to be scientists and matched that with numbers of children choosing science. They assumed the match was due to stereotyping, basically begging the question (petitio principii). They appear to have got their causation wrong - they think stereotypes cause a gender imbalance in school results whilst the likelihood seems pretty high that a gender imbalance causes the stereotype. That suggestion doesn't appear in the discussion and yet seems the most likely objection.

4a. This is a good study, yet still in the Sci.Am. write up the article author demonstrates a sexist bias - "Unfortunately, too, many women are not attuned to subtle gender biases.". Yet the study shows that the bias is equal across men and women: quoting the abstract of 4b "The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student.". The female author has unwittingly implied that 'this is a male problem but oh some women are also to blame' whilst the study says that men and women are equally to blame.

4b. On the subject of their conclusions they don't appear to have accounted for what I'd consider the first alternate hypothesis, that neither men nor women in science like working with other women for reasons unrelated to competency. They do look at whether people "liked" the students, but people liked the female student more than the male which is subtly different to wanting to work with someone [this "likeability" bias didn't even make it to the abstract though]. (It's a pity they didn't look at gender neutral names too).

4b has interesting results that look strongly supported and that I hadn't seen ... I took the IAT test (mentioned in 1a too IIRC) and apparently slightly associated women more with science - I can't work out what in the test suggests that conclusion though presumably timing (I hope they took proper account of left-right biases; my test didn't appear to mix them enough).

Can you or anyone link me to the opposite studies for female dominated fields? Do they show the same bias against women?