The real reason there aren't more female scientists | FACTUAL FEMINIST

Men greatly outnumber women in the STEM subjects: Science, technology, engineering, and math. But why is that? Everywhere we hear about massive gender bias against women in these fields, but what if it's just not true? The Factual Feminist explains other reasons for the discrepancy that you may not have heard.

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[basedjorts]

As an engineering student, I can tell you one thing for sure, I can say one of the most common things I hear from other male engineering students is they wish there were more women in engineering. If there is any discrimination against women in our field, it isn't from us. We would be happy to have more of them.

[EpicLichenut]

STEM is hard. I am a woman, and I recently received my BS in Physics. I saw many people (both men and women) drop out or switch majors during my four years. I considered switching majors on many occasions myself! But I stuck with it because I honestly love Physics, and I didn't want to study anything else.

Whenever I hear people discussing how to get more women in the sciences, I always think, "Science doesn't want more women. Science doesn't want more men. Science wants more scientists." What I mean by this is just because someone might show proficiency for a subject like physics, they should not study it unless they have the heart and passion to study it. If they are only studying it because they are good at it or because it's expected of them, they will most likely switch out, or if they do get their BS usually don't go back for a Master's or Ph.D.

It reminds me of the ending quote from movie Serenity when Captain Reynolds says about flying a ship, "Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home."

[hasen]

Society has long treated "nerd" males like outcasts. Well guess what, it didn't stop them from pursuing their interests in STEM fields.

[goondocksaints]

I found that the extreme majority of people advocating for more women pursuing STEM majors on my college campuses were Humanities majors. It always sounded like, "I'M not interested in Science, but more [OTHER] women should be."

[RoboticsNShenanigans]

When people talk about equality in occupations, they always say "we need more female engineers and scientists". I've yet to see anyone say "we need more female construction workers and miners".

[coweatsman]

"And all virgins". Imagine if you made that remark about a course dominated by all women. You'd never hear the end of it. The Twitter storm would be F5.

[corpusc]

this is the kind of rational feminist i like to see.

[jessicadeines]

I am an example of a female with an Dr in Computer Science and Masters in Physics. I went to these fields as they were more interesting to me. Many of my friends naturally gravitated towards teaching and psychology. I don't think I was any more intellegant then them, was much more about interest. I found that in my conversations with feminists on campus that this explanation was very unsatisfactory. A few of my friends that went to feminist studies even went as far as accusing me of betraying my gender by pointing this out and not claiming any hardship in being successful in Physics. I don't think there is anything wrong with the difference between us in interest but I think they were more bothered that the perspective was that STEM fields are more difficult and require more work in general than "softer" sciences or more liberal arts type degrees. I was amazed how often the discussions about women in the sciences turned very aggressive and personal. I never thought that choosing a hard science degree would cause such a rift between us.

[AEI]

Everywhere we hear about massive gender bias against women in STEM fields, but what if it's just not true? The Factual Feminist explains other reasons for the discrepancy that you may not have heard. 

[nushi]

As a recent graduate of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering and a girl, I keep reading these articles about how its awful for girls in STEM and how the discrimination is off the walls (mostly on tumblr blogs and such). I've personally never faced an issue in my many years of engineering education and honestly can't think of another fellow female graduate who has. The professors and faculty are exactly as helpful to the girls as they are to the men. This video has it right. Whether its social conditioning or not, most people tend to follow their passion. A girl who truly wants to be an engineer will become one, regardless of what her parents or society or media tells her to be and regardless of what toys she played with. I'm not failing to acknowledge the role society plays in a girl's life, I'm saying that it doesn't play as much as huge of a role as most people in the humanities tend to think it does. 

[valerieromine]

If feminism actually was about equality, feminist would be working just as hard at getting more men into jobs such as teaching or nursing as aggressively as they are pushing women into STEM jobs.

[Spawn]

I hate when feminists say that STEM fields are hostile and intimidating to women. As a Computer Science graduate whose graduating class was of 16 (2 female, 14 male), the 2 females were always seen as equally awesome computer scientists. No one treated them any differently (though they may have been asked out by other computer science students more often lol) and they both excelled and found excellent jobs. When I ask my other non-STEM female friends why they didn't choose a STEM field... none of them say because it was too intimidating or they were biased against. They all say "because I didn't want to, I like what I do better".

[Elanarae]

It's sad that common sense is so dead in some parts of the internet / world that "Women and Men usually have different interests" is so mindblowing for some people.

I finished my Bachelor of Computer Science with 17 other men and 4 women, and I'll safely say that those women have the same knowledge and skill than we men had. Why? Because they loved the subject, they were interested in Computer Science. But we also had many many many people, men and women who dropped out of the class, why? It wasn't their field.

During a school specialized in computer science (Hard to describe ... German here :D) I had a girl that was really bad in computer science. She usually had a 5 in her programming courses and I did my best to help her so she got up to a 3 and she could finish the school to start studying a different subject.

She is a Master of Law now, Computer Science just wasn't her thing, but she managed to find her field of interest and rocked it.

[stefanmetzeler]

I studied Physics and IT at EPFL in Switzerland. That was back in the early 1980s.

In Physics, we had 3 women out of 93 students, in the second year, it was down to 50 students and 1 woman.

In IT, the first year, we had 150 students out of which 15 were women.

One day, I entered the wrong lecture hall and was amazed to see that half of the students were girls. A quick look at the course program revealed that this was an architecture class.

So there was no barrier to entry, no social, economic or other obstacle that hindered women from entering that university. They ALL could have taken physics, math or IT, but they CHOSE not to.

As professional IT consultant and developer, over the last 30 years, I have observed other differences: in IT, as in other engineering fields, you always have projects that are urgent or demand extra efforts over considerable amounts of time - you have to work late or over weekends etc.

I have done so with numerous men, but although I occasionally met women working in IT jobs, NONE of them ever agreed to do extra hours to complete urgent projects. They all wanted their time off to engage in social activities.

[AogNubJoshh]

1:20 I love how she actually considered this ludicrous explanation. I admire how she gives rational and calm consideration of it, even though it is quite obviously wrong. That's what other feminists are failing at. Rather than rationally and calmly considering differing perspectives, they instead just show outrage and refuse to engage in any discussion. It may seem wrong to them, but without engaging in debate, no progress will be made to enlighten either side.

[GoddoDoggo]

While I don't think the low amount of women in STEM fields, or the low amount of men in social and life science fields is necessarily due to outright sexism and discrimination, I certainly think it has a lot to do with gendered expectations we've had for centuries, and that we're still somewhat fed today.
I don't know how many times I heard growing up that, "Boys are better at math, boys are better at using tools, boys are tough and don't let things bother them" and "Girls are better at arts, girls are better with kids and animals, girls are good at expressing their emotions."
I especially think the dichotomy of emotional expression might contribute to women often being more verbally expressive, and, obviously, the encouragement of the idea that "one gender is naturally better at this thing than the other" influences kids and young adults to head on a path that is more "fitting" for them.

Heck, this was actually the reason for my own initial aversion to math. When I was struggling with it, my own high school math teacher outright said to me, "Well, you know, you shouldn't dwell on it so much, it's typical for girls to not be so good at math. It's just not for you." I wouldn't call him "sexist, " he was a very nice and fair guy, but I do believe his idea was flawed. After he told me that, I did the bare minimum to pass math classes and focused on other pursuits.
I'm somewhat upset about it now, though, because now that I'm teaching myself mathematics, I realize I can actually understand the concepts quite well.

EDIT: Incidentally, I've also had long discussions with two of my male friends, both of whom is very quiet, and one of whom tends to bottle his emotions until he blows up. They've each complained that their dispositions stem from them often being told "You're a boy, you can't cry, you have to be tough" and similar notions while growing up.

I don't think these expectations are fair to men OR women, honestly. We could stand to be a bit more careful in how we instill expectations in our kids.

[TheTelenation]

This is anecdotal no doubt but I find myself matching this.
I wasn't raised with gender roles, my mum went to work and my dad stayed at home, my mum never wore make up or a skirt and my brother and I shared toys.
Despite growing up in the exact same environment and only be 2 years older, my brother excelled in math where as I excelled in English, biology, history and art.
I like it when a subject can have shades of grey, I love the term 'death of the author'.

This preference meant I didn't do as well when the answers were black and white, I didn't enjoy chemistry, physics or even Spelling as much as the other subjects because I found 1 + 1 = 2 to be boring and having to follow a strict, single path to get an answer restrictive.
I had no social pressures to pursue these other subjects yet I did because of the kind of person I am and that in no small part would have been affected by my sex.

[Thatsprettiemuchit]

I am a girl studying higher level STEM. The most challenging thing for me emotionally has been walking into class and immediately being seen as the only girl in the class. This isn't that big of a deal in lots of situations but whenever there is a group project, or group work, I am the one chosen last to be in a group. Groups are formed among the guys who are already friends and I tend to be the excluded one. In high school, guys tend to be friends with guys and girls tend to be friends with girls. If you are the only girl in your class, you tend to be singled out and excluded. It's not necessarily conscious discrimination or any bad intentions, it's just the way it tends to be and it's a shame imo

[jenniferstanton]

I started out as an engineering major in college. Never did I feel any hostility or bias towards myself for being a woman.

I chose to change my major because I decided I wanted to take more science and technology classes. It has been my experience that many of my female friends have no interest in these subjects even though they are equally intelligent.

[matthewatwood]

I'm a guy that's into music, art, and psychology. My interests fall squarely into the female the category. I am very verbal. On intelligence tests, I always get very high overall scores, but my math scores aren't so great. It has never once crossed my mind that I might not be a man, or that I might be somehow more feminine because of all of this. I am unquestionably a very masculine man.