Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

First let me say that yet again, another blog post that contains little to no science to back up claims; instead, personal feelings and an individual's experience become the standard by which apparently all people experience working in STEM. We should not immediately concede that one person's experience defines an industry, or several. (The "stereotype threat" article is not a compelling enough argument to me that there is some gender stereotype conspiracy only found in STEM)

Second: all these things the author experienced can be said about any minority group, and women is just one of them in STEM. Therefore, can we really say that there is a particular bias against women, when the bias actually exists among many minorities? Therefore, can't we assume that really it's the monopoly of the majority that we should combat, and not specifically the gender gap?

Third, holy shit. If your self confidence is so low that any critique by a peer could shatter your world and cause you to abandon your career, you need therapy, or at least some kind of daily affirmation exercise. And being too afraid to ask to join a group is no excuse, for any person. You have to be able to work with other people.

Often times they will not be the same gender or ethnicity as you. Simply saying it's difficult or scary is not some big revelation: many people find it intimidating to work with groups of people they know nothing about. Luckily, that's what college is good for: overcoming those fears and becoming comfortable with what will eventually be a requirement of your job.

I agree with all her Eliminating the Threat points (even though that's kind of a harsh way of saying "Overcoming Obstacles")

  First let me say that yet again, another blog post that 
  contains little to no science to back up claims; instead, 
  personal feelings and an individual's experience become 
  the standard by which apparently all people experience 
  working in STEM.

"Stereotype Threat and Women’s Math Performance" by Spencer, Steele and Quinn [1] contains an interesting series of experiments.

In the first experiment, test subjects are given two math exams, an easier one (from the GRE general exam) and a harder one (from the advanced GRE mathematics exam). All test subjects had 1 semester to 1 year of calculus with at least a B grade. They observed something that has been seen in the literature before - that both genders perform equally on the easier exam, but women underperform on the harder exam.

In the second experiment, a different set of test subjects were given the harder exam. Half the subjects were told the test had been shown to produce gender differences, half that it had been shown not to produce gender differences.

Characterizing the test as insensitive to gender differences was enough to totally eliminate women's underperformance. When the same test was characterized as sensitive to gender differences, women significantly underperformed in relation to equally qualified men. (results are fig. 2 on page 13 of the PDF)

The third experiment repeats the second experiment under different conditions and gets a similar result.

  The "stereotype threat" article is not a compelling 
  enough argument to me that there is some gender 
  stereotype conspiracy only found in STEM

No stereotype conspiracy is required - the threat is from the stereotype /held by the test subject/ that they will/are expected to underperform.

[1] http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/carnegie/learning_resources/LAW_PG...

Yeah, I read the article, as I specified in my comment.

Not every study or set of experiments is foolproof, and the 'results' of ones that are done specifically on a bias, and never replicated, should not be considered some kind of universal truism.

Did you have some point, or argument, or opinion, you were trying to make?

Never replicated? How about "Knowing Is Half the Battle Teaching Stereotype Threat as a Means of Improving Women's Math Performance" by Johns, Schmader and Martens [1] ?

Participants were divided into three groups; the first group were told they were getting a problem solving test; the second group were told they were getting a math test for a study of gender differences; the third group were told the same as the second group and that anxiety could be the result of negative stereotypes that are widely known in society and have nothing to do with their actual ability to do well on the test.

As figure 1 on page 4 of the PDF shows, the first group had roughly equal gender performance, in the second group women underperformed, and in the third group performance was roughly equal.

Or why not "Solo status, stereotype threat, and performance expectancies: Their effects on women's performance" by Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [2] - once again, women performed worse in the stereotype threat condition that in the no threat condition.

  Did you have some point, or argument, or opinion, 
  you were trying to make?

Only that your statement that there is little to no science to back up the blog's claims ignores multiple peer-reviewed studies.

[1] http://www.mdecgateway.org/olms/data/resource/9098/Knowing%2... [2] http://j.b.legal.free.fr/Blog/share/Expos%E9s%20M1/Stereotyp...

When I wrote a post that contained nothing but science it got flagged off HN with one up vote and no comments.

I feel like there is a huge double-bind, where anything science-y is boring and dry and long and qualified with caveats and error bounds, so no one reads it. On the other hand, anything short, rhetorical and designed to communicate the human cost of the problem gets dismissed for being nothing but the writer's opinion.

I don't really know what the answer is; I would love to hear any suggestions people have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com