Women STEM students up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism - eviltoast

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.

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    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.

    • flicker@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      This is the most “not all men” answer I could ever imagine. You literally got angry at the data, not because there’s sexism, but because there are other men who exist in other places who aren’t sexist.

      It’s well-documented that women don’t go into STEM. When data explains why women don’t go into STEM, getting pissy because there are men who are in other fields who aren’t sexist completely misses the entire goddamned point.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I think he may have stumbled past a interesting point (his main point was kind of dumb)-

        While I would say the STEM crowd is more susceptable to a certain kind of intellectual narcissism that allows shitty behavior, anyone doing this kind of study should hopefully be making an effort to address the idea that if like 1/6 of dudes are extra shitty then are the STEM students uniquely shitty or are they just normal shitty and the classroom breakdown just means that there’s like 50% more shitty dudes and half as many targets for their shittyness.

        That said, I’d love to see the stats on law schools as they tend have the “bro-est bros”

          • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            So not worth studying? How do you address things like sexism without attempting to understand it? the tech bro sexism itself might be an overlap with incel culture which may be solveable in a variety of ways or religious sexism which could be harder for a public US institution to address.

            IMO it also affects how many extra counselors you’d need to hire to expand tech degrees vs non tech degrees and whether maybe some kind of socializing class should be included in curriculum - this isn’t just some game, both the victims and perpetrators are real people who have to be accomodated/resocialized appropriately.

      • Skates@feddit.nl
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        10 months ago

        Does the data explain why women don’t go into stem, or does it simply state what women in stem self-report?

        Don’t go into stem, you can’t read data. And I say that while honestly not caring about your genitals.

      • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        No it doesn’t.

        I’m getting pissy that it’s always about women and women alone that are underrepresented.

        If this data also included data on subjects where women outnumber men to the same rate then it would be interesting as a control. But seeing as they are just looking at data where women are already outnumbered it is manipulating the data to either get nothing or the result you want. It won’t for example show the result you don’t want.

        The question is are people just sexist when they outnumber the other sex? We don’t know because it doesn’t get asked. Something needs to be done but what is unknown until you find out.

        Girls quite possibly don’t enjoy stem as much as boys. That’s an entire possibility for men outnumbering women. But nevertheless there is a push to put more women into the only departments were they don’t already outnumber men. But there is never any push to put men into areas they are under represented. Like I said one sex might naturally enjoy something at a higher rate and that’s not a problem I don’t think, but with one exception. I think teachers should largely be evenly distributed. Especially in primary school there was 0 male teachers we could talk to or could help us with anything. I was lucky I had male role models that could teach me about being a guy at home and in afterschool clubs. But some kids don’t, they might not get a male role model until they are 13, then it might be too late.

        • flicker@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Yep. I was right. You turned a conversation about “women are being harrassed” into how upset you are that we aren’t talking about problems men face. If you want to advocate for the problems men face, actually do that, instead of bitching when we are discussing problems women face.

          • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Sorry I belive in equality and think the data should be for the whole population.

            Science doesn’t work when you hope for a certain answer and select the data in a way to maximise that outcome.

    • xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 months ago

      Dismissing sexism within a particular group because it is disproportionately prevalent in that group is, frankly, treating that sexism as acceptable.

      You can just as easily extend this approach until you either reach a group where it’s evened out, or is the entirety of humanity.

      “It’s more prevalent in stem? No, you have to look at university students overall”

      “It’s prevalent in university students overall? No, you have to look at all students”

      “It’s prevalent in students as a whole? No, you have to look at everyone involved in education”

      “It’s prevalent in education in general? No, you have to look at public services as a whole”

      “It’s prevalent in public services as a whole? No, you have to look at all non-private entities”

      “It’s prevalent across non-private entities? No, you have to look at all forms of work”