Why are the virtually 0 girls who do engineering or hard sciences?

blondie.I don't understand this new NS formatting, so I'm just going to reply to this all at once.

First of all, I'm a man, I'm not a declared feminist, and my views are supported by arguably the highest organization in engineering. The point isn't that there needs to be a 50/50 split of genders, and that's not what I said. What I said was that diversity plays a role in successful problem solving. That's ALL DIVERSITY, not just gender. Diversity is more than gender or the color of one's skin - it's about perspective, background, and what you bring to a discussion when approaching a multifaceted problem.

So now, that's besides the point. Why are there no women in engineering?

My weakest point is probably that men are funneled into engineering from childhood, and I'll concede that many girls do play with Legos. However, while I don't have a source it's probably entirely true that more boys than girls play with toys like Legos, enabling them to think analytically and solve problems. Dolls don't do shit.

Engineering is an "old boys club." Engineering is full of old white men. What women feels comfortable going into a profession like that?

And finally, no, it's not. People don't understand that engineering doesn't suck. The vast majority of people don't understand the scope of engineering. Additionally, most people (in general) don't have engineering "role models" that they can look up to to guide them into the field. Women are especially lacking in this regard.

It may be semi true that women aren't entering the field because they don't want to. That is not the answer. They are certainly capable of entering the field, so why don't they? That's the question at hand.

Good guy Mil defending women engineers

AT-ATEngineering might be science based, but it's a whole different way of thinking.

yeah, i am quite aware of what engineering is. in my experience it has been (mostly) pure math and science. the real applications of that math and science dont become super apparent until third year really. the first two years of engineering is core math/calc and specific science courses depending on your major. its not much different than pure science at that point. do you think that highschool people picking their uni degree really would know the difference anyways? what difference would it make to a highschool girl? its not like they would say "oh my female brain definitely cant handle the things that make engineering different than regular science, so i will do regular science" if they dont know what those differences actually are.

blondie.There's no one way of thinking to go about any problem. Sure, problems engineering may require a certain set of skills, skills can be mastered by anyone. The way someone attacks that problem is always up to them. The fact that women think differently is favorable in engineering because it can bring up new ideas that men won't have.

The lack of women in engineering is not because they can't handle it or aren't smart enough.

I think part of the reason so few girls are in mech aerospace electrical engineering is because their different way of thinking leaves them without the necessary thoughts to be an engineer.
Girls are naturally more verbally and less mathematically inclined as opposed to boys which are the opposite. Your thinking that girls being less adept at math as an asset to them in engineering is fucking ridiculous. Stop talking out of your ass bra

Eh, we'll see. My girlfriend is an engineer, has graduated from a top engineering school with a 3.65 GPA (B.S. and M.E.), and compared to her I'm a complete dumbass. It is what it is.

blondie.There's no one way of thinking to go about any problem. Sure, problems engineering may require a certain set of skills, skills can be mastered by anyone. The way someone attacks that problem is always up to them. The fact that women think differently is favorable in engineering because it can bring up new ideas that men won't have.

The lack of women in engineering is not because they can't handle it or aren't smart enough.

I never said that they aren't smart enough, at one point in here i said they are just as apt. I'm just saying we are wired different and that's why women aren't drawn to engineering as men are. It has nothing to do with mental aptitude.

SpssI think part of the reason so few girls are in mech aerospace electrical engineering is because their different way of thinking leaves them without the necessary thoughts to be an engineer.
Girls are naturally more verbally and less mathematically inclined as opposed to boys which are the opposite. Your thinking that girls being less adept at math as an asset to them in engineering is fucking ridiculous. Stop talking out of your ass bra

Man this is even worse than what blondie is saying. You're fucking so beyond retarded if you think girls aren't mentally capable of being engineers. Girls are not less adept at math when it comes to engineering applications, I can't believe you actually believe this shit. Sure girls have different brain "wirings" but that does not at all mean they aren't capable. They have different NATURAL thinking patterns, which could be good for problem solving as a group but it doesn't mean they can't do math ffs

Lots of the research that I've seen in the 80's and 90's supports your argument that women are definitively worse than men in the visual-spatial aspects of mathematics. However, pretty well everything I've seen published in the last 15 years doesn't really agree with this, in the sense that yes, by the end of high school males are performing better but if you look at children the trend is absent or less apparent. These papers I found seem to suggest that it is our constant parroting of the idea that girls suck at math that makes them think they shouldn't pursue math and are bad at it. Additionally, the women who do pursue math feel the need to emphasize their masculine traits and still feel a lack of inclusion, such that only those that are the most self-sufficient tend to stick with it.

From the paper : Where Are All the Women? Gender Differences in Participation in Physical Science and Engineering.
Our analyses suggest that the main source of gender differences in entry into physical science and engineering occupations is not gender differences in either math aptitude or a sense of personal efficacy to succeed at these occupations, rather it is a gender difference in the value placed on different types of occupations. Furthermore, our results suggest that these differences begin influencing educational decisions quite early in life.
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&uid=2006-22337-016

From the review : Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science?
This article considers 3 claims that cognitive sex differences account for the differential representation of men and women in high-level careers in mathematics and science:
(a) males are more focused on objects from the beginning of life and therefore are predisposed to better learning about mechanical systems;
(b) males have a profile of spatial and numerical abilities producing greater aptitude for mathematics; and
(c) males are more variable in their cognitive abilities and therefore predominate at the upper reaches of mathematical talent.
Research on cognitive development in human infants, preschool children, and students at all levels fails to support these claims. Instead, it provides evidence that mathematical and scientific reasoning develop from a set of biologically based cognitive capacities that males and females share. These capacities lead men and women to develop equal talent for mathematics and science.
http://rhig.physics.yale.edu/~nattrass/WomenInPhysicsArticles/ReviewAmericanPsychologistSpelkeDec2005.pdf

From the paper: Implicit Stereotypes, Gender Identification, and Math-Related Outcomes: A Prospective Study of Female College Students
The present findings suggest that implicit gender stereotypes about math aptitude, in conjunction with gender identification, reduces women's math performance and their desire to performance pursue
math-intensive careers. We examined math-related outcomes among women enrolled in rigorous introductory college calculus courses. The less women were gender identified and the less they
possessed implicit gender stereotypes about math ability, the better they performed on the final exam and the more likely they were to express interest in a math-related career.
Women's math performance is debilitated by stereotypes when the stereotypes are automatically activated or when women perceive them to be self-relevant. This debilitation may explain why math-identified women distance themselves from stereotypically feminine characteristics (Pronin et al 2004)

From the paper: Identity bifurcation in response to stereotype threat: Women and mathematics
Three studies explored women's bifurcation of feminine identity as a response to threatening stereotypes in the domain of mathematics. Study 1 demonstrated that women in a math class who previously had completed a large number of math courses disavowed ‘‘feminine characteristics’’ strongly associated with stereotypes about women's potential for math success (e.g., flirtatiousness, planning to have children) but not characteristics perceived to be weakly associated with these stereotypes (e.g., empathy, nurturance), more than women who had completed fewer math courses. Studies 2 and 3 directly manipulated stereotype threat by presenting a scientific article reporting stereotype-consistent sex differences in math aptitude. As predicted, women strongly iden- tified with mathematics responded to this threatening article by disavowing feminine characteristics strongly associated, but not those weakly associated, with the relevant negative stereotypes, while women not strongly identified with mathematics showed no such differentiation in response. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

From the paper: Women Engineering Students and Self-Efficacy: A Multi-Year, Multi-Institution Study of Women Engineering Student Self-Efficacy.
Results indicate that while women students show positive progress on some self-efficacy and related subscales, they show a significant decrease on feelings of inclusion from the first to second measurement period and further suggest a relationship between ethnicity and feelings of inclusion. Additionally, correlations show that self-efficacy is related to women students' plans to persist in this predominantly male discipline.




In my experiences from living in residence, the guys who were in engineering weren't doing any better in classes that they shared with us girls and guys in science. I remember a group of them telling me to drop linear algebra because they almost failed so I wouldn't stand a chance - I cruised through with a B or B+ pretty easily. Because guess what, I may be a girl in biology but I'm smart and I've never struggled to grasp mathematical concepts.

What did seem to distinguish the guys from the girls was the guys tended to be more practical with their choice of degrees - they were pursuing something that would make them money so they were almost all in engineering or business. The girls on the other hand tended to study what they were interested in and many of them had the idealistic 'I want to help people/animals/the planet' view - they were spread between biology, anthropology, geology, nursing, business, IR, economics, architecture, as well as a couple in engineering. I'm not sure if there's any biological difference at work here - I'm sure evo-anth and evo-psych people would argue that this is because females evolved to fulfil the role of carer and males evolved to fulfil the role of breadwinner. I could also see it be a result of parents having different expectations for their sons, so they are raised expecting to fulfil the breadwinner role.

Additionally, engineering was actually something I considered pursuing at one point because it emphasizes skills that I do well with (for example these spatial skills that are repeatedly mentioned here - when I was tested on that section of the IQ test I fell off the top end of the bell curve). However, I couldn't stand the attitude of these engineering students. Why would I want to spend 4 years studying with followed by a life-time of working exclusively with these guys who would never shut up about their superiority (to anyone), and felt the need to tell me that I would fail because I was a woman and currently in biology.

this is not true there are tons of babes in my engineering class

DIX~Man this is even worse than what blondie is saying. You're fucking so beyond retarded if you think girls aren't mentally capable of being engineers. Girls are not less adept at math when it comes to engineering applications, I can't believe you actually believe this shit. Sure girls have different brain "wirings" but that does not at all mean they aren't capable. They have different NATURAL thinking patterns, which could be good for problem solving as a group but it doesn't mean they can't do math ffs

While your busy talking out of your poop hole, just remember that boys outperform girls in math across the board. Girls likewise outperform boys in verbal ability. But words wont build you things; equations will.

paige.Lots of the research that I've seen in the 80's and 90's supports your argument that women are definitively worse than men in the visual-spatial aspects of mathematics. However, pretty well everything I've seen published in the last 15 years doesn't really agree with this, in the sense that yes, by the end of high school males are performing better but if you look at children the trend is absent or less apparent. These papers I found seem to suggest that it is our constant parroting of the idea that girls suck at math that makes them think they shouldn't pursue math and are bad at it. Additionally, the women who do pursue math feel the need to emphasize their masculine traits and still feel a lack of inclusion, such that only those that are the most self-sufficient tend to stick with it.

From the paper : Where Are All the Women? Gender Differences in Participation in Physical Science and Engineering.
Our analyses suggest that the main source of gender differences in entry into physical science and engineering occupations is not gender differences in either math aptitude or a sense of personal efficacy to succeed at these occupations, rather it is a gender difference in the value placed on different types of occupations. Furthermore, our results suggest that these differences begin influencing educational decisions quite early in life.
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&uid=2006-22337-016

From the review : Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science?
This article considers 3 claims that cognitive sex differences account for the differential representation of men and women in high-level careers in mathematics and science:
(a) males are more focused on objects from the beginning of life and therefore are predisposed to better learning about mechanical systems;
(b) males have a profile of spatial and numerical abilities producing greater aptitude for mathematics; and
(c) males are more variable in their cognitive abilities and therefore predominate at the upper reaches of mathematical talent.
Research on cognitive development in human infants, preschool children, and students at all levels fails to support these claims. Instead, it provides evidence that mathematical and scientific reasoning develop from a set of biologically based cognitive capacities that males and females share. These capacities lead men and women to develop equal talent for mathematics and science.
http://rhig.physics.yale.edu/~nattrass/WomenInPhysicsArticles/ReviewAmericanPsychologistSpelkeDec2005.pdf

From the paper: Implicit Stereotypes, Gender Identification, and Math-Related Outcomes: A Prospective Study of Female College Students
The present findings suggest that implicit gender stereotypes about math aptitude, in conjunction with gender identification, reduces women's math performance and their desire to performance pursue
math-intensive careers. We examined math-related outcomes among women enrolled in rigorous introductory college calculus courses. The less women were gender identified and the less they
possessed implicit gender stereotypes about math ability, the better they performed on the final exam and the more likely they were to express interest in a math-related career.
Women's math performance is debilitated by stereotypes when the stereotypes are automatically activated or when women perceive them to be self-relevant. This debilitation may explain why math-identified women distance themselves from stereotypically feminine characteristics (Pronin et al 2004)

From the paper: Identity bifurcation in response to stereotype threat: Women and mathematics
Three studies explored women's bifurcation of feminine identity as a response to threatening stereotypes in the domain of mathematics. Study 1 demonstrated that women in a math class who previously had completed a large number of math courses disavowed ‘‘feminine characteristics’’ strongly associated with stereotypes about women's potential for math success (e.g., flirtatiousness, planning to have children) but not characteristics perceived to be weakly associated with these stereotypes (e.g., empathy, nurturance), more than women who had completed fewer math courses. Studies 2 and 3 directly manipulated stereotype threat by presenting a scientific article reporting stereotype-consistent sex differences in math aptitude. As predicted, women strongly iden- tified with mathematics responded to this threatening article by disavowing feminine characteristics strongly associated, but not those weakly associated, with the relevant negative stereotypes, while women not strongly identified with mathematics showed no such differentiation in response. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

From the paper: Women Engineering Students and Self-Efficacy: A Multi-Year, Multi-Institution Study of Women Engineering Student Self-Efficacy.
Results indicate that while women students show positive progress on some self-efficacy and related subscales, they show a significant decrease on feelings of inclusion from the first to second measurement period and further suggest a relationship between ethnicity and feelings of inclusion. Additionally, correlations show that self-efficacy is related to women students' plans to persist in this predominantly male discipline.




In my experiences from living in residence, the guys who were in engineering weren't doing any better in classes that they shared with us girls and guys in science. I remember a group of them telling me to drop linear algebra because they almost failed so I wouldn't stand a chance - I cruised through with a B or B+ pretty easily. Because guess what, I may be a girl in biology but I'm smart and I've never struggled to grasp mathematical concepts.

What did seem to distinguish the guys from the girls was the guys tended to be more practical with their choice of degrees - they were pursuing something that would make them money so they were almost all in engineering or business. The girls on the other hand tended to study what they were interested in and many of them had the idealistic 'I want to help people/animals/the planet' view - they were spread between biology, anthropology, geology, nursing, business, IR, economics, architecture, as well as a couple in engineering. I'm not sure if there's any biological difference at work here - I'm sure evo-anth and evo-psych people would argue that this is because females evolved to fulfil the role of carer and males evolved to fulfil the role of breadwinner. I could also see it be a result of parents having different expectations for their sons, so they are raised expecting to fulfil the breadwinner role.

Additionally, engineering was actually something I considered pursuing at one point because it emphasizes skills that I do well with (for example these spatial skills that are repeatedly mentioned here - when I was tested on that section of the IQ test I fell off the top end of the bell curve). However, I couldn't stand the attitude of these engineering students. Why would I want to spend 4 years studying with followed by a life-time of working exclusively with these guys who would never shut up about their superiority (to anyone), and felt the need to tell me that I would fail because I was a woman and currently in biology.

When the results of studies are in conflict with eachother the best rule of thumb to find out which is true is to look for the study that is politically repulsive. You will cut through the bs every time

SpssWhile your busy talking out of your poop hole, just remember that boys outperform girls in math across the board. Girls likewise outperform boys in verbal ability. But words wont build you things; equations will.

Can you please give me a source so I can tell you how retarded the source was? Women have been found to actually outperform men in calculus classes at uni...

SpssWhen the results of studies are in conflict with eachother the best rule of thumb to find out which is true is to look for the study that is politically repulsive. You will cut through the bs every time

what a terrible rule of thumb.

I think you've made it very clear you're someone who's insecure about themselves and you find solace in your insecurity by convincing yourself you're the better half of the world.

SpssWhen the results of studies are in conflict with eachother the best rule of thumb to find out which is true is to look for the study that is politically repulsive. You will cut through the bs every time

When the results of studies are in conflict, I choose to focus on the ones that are not 20-30 years out of date. Especially when there are obvious flaws in the methods of those ones which are in fact 20-30 years out of date. I'm not arguing that biological differences don't exist between men and women, or that these genetic differences can't result in behavioural differences. Just that what I've been taught in classes, encountered in my own readings on the subject, and experienced in my own life point to a different explanation and one that should be considered.

Women have smaller brains. It's science. You can't argue with science.

Im petroleum engineering at Penn State. Needless to say, its extremely lacking in the female department.

Girls do them, just specific fields. Pharmacy, Bio-E and Chem-E in my school have a lot of girls. Most want to be doctors.

blondie.OP, you're an idiot. It's not about political correctness, it's about being realistic about a social problem. Diversity in engineering is an issue because diversity in problem solving is important. Diverse groups reach better solutions than non-diverse groups every time.

There are quite a few reasons why women are an underrepresented minority in engineering (and other hard sciences). These are recognized by the National Academy of Engineering and are fairly similar to why there isn't much racial diversity in engineering (other than white and Asian people).

- Men have greater chances of being channeled into hard science from childhood; women do not (as much) - think toys, which is more 'engineeringy': Legos or Barbies?
- Engineering is an "old boys club."
- The public perception of engineering is not amenable to women. The public perception of engineering is wrong.

Pretty nice piece, for those who are interested. Semi-relevant.
https://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/CompetitiveMaterialsandSolutions/DiversityinEngineering.aspx

Right on!
My mom works in a field dominated by men. When there's a problem, the differences in the way women think vs. men think means that you get to approach the problem from different angles. More angles= more probability of finding a solution.

my opinions on life are always based on one article i read. because every article on the internet is accurate, true, and 100% like the rest of the articles i read.

I'm currently a senior civil engineering BS student at CU. I've talked to the people on the board of engineering at our school and civil has the lowest female proportion of any engineering discipline at CU which they said is somewhere between 14-16%. In most of my lectures that can have up to 100 students in them, there is usually less than 10 girls in the entire class. Most group projects I have done in my entire four years at CU have been entirely male groups.

The people on here saying that women don't have the brain power or lack the "wiring" to succeed in engineering are so full of shit it is not even funny. Many of the female engineering students I have worked with are just as smart, if not smarter, than male students.

There are definitely more women engineering students in Environmental, Chemical, and Bio-Chem engineering here at CU. From what I have heard, the chemistry, biology, and similar majors here at CU are either 50/50 or even more heavily female based. Not really sure what the reason for more females in the bio/chem based majors and engineering majors is, but I personally HATE all of that stuff.

To get back to the question, I think the reason for a lack of women in engineering has to do a lot with social aspects. It is not girly or feminine to go into engineering, especially in disciplines such as mechanical or civil. However, if you are a female in a heavily male dominated field such as civil engineering, you will have a MUCH easier time getting a job/internship compared to an equally qualified man.

no need for a few paragraphs of paraphrasing wikipedia and thesaurus inspired dialogue for me. women are good for 3 things: cooking, cleaning... and vagina. does that answer your question?

VinnieFwhat a terrible rule of thumb.

I think you've made it very clear you're someone who's insecure about themselves and you find solace in your insecurity by convincing yourself you're the better half of the world.

Not half. Just 99.616%

paige.When the results of studies are in conflict, I choose to focus on the ones that are not 20-30 years out of date. Especially when there are obvious flaws in the methods of those ones which are in fact 20-30 years out of date. I'm not arguing that biological differences don't exist between men and women, or that these genetic differences can't result in behavioural differences. Just that what I've been taught in classes, encountered in my own readings on the subject, and experienced in my own life point to a different explanation and one that should be considered.

Science doesnt "try" to be politically correct, although it often is. Whenever there is a debate on something that has the potential to hurt peoples feelings, you can be sure that the scientists on the politically incorrect side are not fucking lying about their results JUST TO HURT PEOPLES FEELINGS. You can also be certain that those on the politically correct side DO HAVE AN AGENDA; that being, preventing peoples feelings from getting hurt. The recent studies you mention that all of the sudden, mysteriously, HAVE RESULTS THAT NO LONGER HURT PEOPLES FEELINGS, are as fudged and data massaged as the pc adoption race iq studies which have recently gone at odds with an agenda-less study that showed the race iq gap to persist even when children were adopted by different race families.

So many people i. Here talking out of there asses. Its sickening.
God forbid we hurt anyones feelings with the truth.

Mens and womens brains are different. Men tend to process better in the left hemisphere of the brain while women tend to process equally well between the two hemispheres. This difference explains why men are generally stronger with left-brain activities and approach problem-solving from a task-oriented perspective while women typically solve problems more creatively and are more aware of feelings while communicating. This is the reason why this is. An area of the brain called the inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) is typically significantly larger in men, especially on the left side, than in women. This section of the brain is thought to control mental mathematical ability, and probably explains why men frequently perform higher in mathematical tasks than do women. Interestingly, this is the same area of Einstein’s brain that was discovered to be abnormally large.

DIX~ASIANS.

















But there's tons and tons of babes in chemistry and biology (not hard).

Haha serious? Bio is pretty hard because at the upper level all the kids who take classes want to go to some competitive grad program so literally everyone shoots for an A.

Take a look at engineering... So many kids do that shit and get by with Just C's and low B's because they know they can land a job. Sorry to get you off your high horse but engineering really isn't that hard.

You can simply look at the contributions women have made in the fields of physics, mathematics, and engineering. They are virtually non existent.

In a world of men only we would have iphones, porshes, xboxes, and tunnel boring machines. In a world of only women we would live in caves and read books.
This is an exaggeration but not much of an exaggeration.

SpssNot half. Just 99.616%


Science doesnt "try" to be politically correct, although it often is. Whenever there is a debate on something that has the potential to hurt peoples feelings, you can be sure that the scientists on the politically incorrect side are not fucking lying about their results JUST TO HURT PEOPLES FEELINGS. You can also be certain that those on the politically correct side DO HAVE AN AGENDA; that being, preventing peoples feelings from getting hurt. The recent studies you mention that all of the sudden, mysteriously, HAVE RESULTS THAT NO LONGER HURT PEOPLES FEELINGS, are as fudged and data massaged as the pc adoption race iq studies which have recently gone at odds with an agenda-less study that showed the race iq gap to persist even when children were adopted by different race families.

So many people i. Here talking out of there asses. Its sickening.
God forbid we hurt anyones feelings with the truth.

First sentence should have read "science dousnt try to be politically INcorrect, although it often is."

I agree that women and men have different brains, nobody here is arguing that. But it sounds like you are trying to say that because of this, women cannot be engineers which is soooo false. You don't have to win the nobel prize or create a new scientific theory to be an engineer.

And to the person saying that bio is harder than engineering, I'd say it's just a preference/skill difference. Bio is a ton of memorization of diagrams of the body and stuff like that. Engineering is more application based mathematics where you really only need to memorize the approach to take at a certain type of problem. In my opinion, bio would be WAY harder for me because I hate memorizing stuff. I personally did not think civil engineering was that difficult (civil is also much easier than other engineering disciplines), but I help tutor my bio major friends in their math and physics classes. Everyone has different strengths.

OP i dont think you understand the concept of someone disagreeing with you. not everything is a matter of black and white, and your shitty narrow-minded brain is totally oversimplifying a pretty complex and "blurry" issue with no real conclusions to be found on either side of the discussion.

you need to take yourself less seriously, and you need to realize that people can DISAGREE with you on things. good luck getting through the rest of your life with such a crappy and ignorant attitude. if this was a real life discussion as opposed to an internet one, i wonder if you would still say all these things. even the people who agree with you would laugh you out of the room because of how poorly you handle people who have conflicting opinions.

get some fucking social skills and learn to iterate yourself without sounding like a broken record. youre not trolling anyone, nobody is upset really except for you, and although the content that youre spewing may not be completely retarded, the approach you take at trying to persuade or convince people is very very detrimental to what you are trying to achieve. nobody will listen to you if you talk like this all the time

Girls love fun and money

Engineering is (perceptibly) neither. The Thursday night engineering lab analogy was on point and made me laugh. Truth tickles.

Backstory - I am a MEng mechanical engineer and design large diameter marine drills and topside exploratory deep water marine drilling packages for a living. I enjoy it, but I work ridiculous hours to get very short lead time projects completed successfully. As said, social interaction is minimal. I don't get paid nearly enough for what clients make out of me. This will change when I move abroad/change business.

So didnt read much of the thread because of all the bullshit but yeh i study chemeng and there are very few girls and out of those few girls no attractive girls. i've come to the conclusion that most good looking girls are smart enough to realise they probably don't need to work in life anyway so study something they enjoy

So didnt read much of the thread because of all the bullshit but yeh i study chemeng and there are very few girls and out of those few girls no attractive girls. i've come to the conclusion that most good looking girls are smart enough to realise they probably don't need to work in life anyway so study something they enjoy

matocoAnd to the person saying that bio is harder than engineering, I'd say it's just a preference/skill difference. Bio is a ton of memorization of diagrams of the body and stuff like that. Engineering is more application based mathematics where you really only need to memorize the approach to take at a certain type of problem. In my opinion, bio would be WAY harder for me because I hate memorizing stuff. I personally did not think civil engineering was that difficult (civil is also much easier than other engineering disciplines), but I help tutor my bio major friends in their math and physics classes. Everyone has different strengths.

I wouldnt say women cant be engineers. I would say that they are naturally less inclined towards it than men because of different brain makeup. Women are stronger than men in certain areas, like i have said, but mathematics and spatial reasoning are not among them, and they are important in engineering.

yuckOP i dont think you understand the concept of someone disagreeing with you. not everything is a matter of black and white, and your shitty narrow-minded brain is totally oversimplifying a pretty complex and "blurry" issue with no real conclusions to be found on either side of the discussion.

you need to take yourself less seriously, and you need to realize that people can DISAGREE with you on things. good luck getting through the rest of your life with such a crappy and ignorant attitude. if this was a real life discussion as opposed to an internet one, i wonder if you would still say all these things. even the people who agree with you would laugh you out of the room because of how poorly you handle people who have conflicting opinions.

get some fucking social skills and learn to iterate yourself without sounding like a broken record. youre not trolling anyone, nobody is upset really except for you, and although the content that youre spewing may not be completely retarded, the approach you take at trying to persuade or convince people is very very detrimental to what you are trying to achieve. nobody will listen to you if you talk like this all the time

Youre just so much more mature than me arent you? And youre right, im so angry right now.
I dont mind when people disagree, its when they call me retarded etc as you have that i have to shut them down.
And saying what you said, essentially, is conceding defeat.
So let me be my immature self and parade around victoriously.
U rustled?

SpssI think part of the reason so few girls are in mech aerospace electrical engineering is because their different way of thinking leaves them without the necessary thoughts to be an engineer.
Girls are naturally more verbally and less mathematically inclined as opposed to boys which are the opposite. Your thinking that girls being less adept at math as an asset to them in engineering is fucking ridiculous. Stop talking out of your ass bra

I never said that girls were less adept at math and that it was an asset. Learn to read and try again.

And yuck, its very noble of to to assasinate my character instead of discussing the issue at hand. Very noble. Maybe if you werent wrong in your biased as fuck " lets make sure we dont hurt anybodies feelings" viewpoint.

As for disagreement, I make sure to never delude myself into believing something thats not true. But unlike for many people, this doesnt preclude me from dealing with very far out concepts.
So when someone like you disagrees with me on something, its hard for me to respect their capabilities when they are using essentially the same data set as i am. Either that or they are the type of person who reads one political correctness fueled study and they completely buy in, without having the mental independence to question anything.
You could be correct, but since youre disagreeing with me, its very improbable.

For example you seem to hold a very high opinion of yourself, but at the same time you probably think that living things have something special in them that chemical reactions like a burning flame dont. You probably also believe in free will, even though its existence requires some laws of physics to be broken.

You could learn alot from me buddy.
Remember maturity is neither a sign of or a substitute for intelligence.

Well I'm a freshman in ME and out of the 650 freshmen in the program only 35 are girls..

So your title was a question. You offered a possible answer in your original post and anyone that disagrees or offers another possible answer is wrong. What was the point?

I don't think this has anything to do with biological gender differences but at a young age we are encouraged to do certain behaviours based on gender. Toys like lego are often marketed to boys (indirectly giving skills that might lead to engineering) where as thing girls are given toy kitchen sets that might encourage a more social environment.

damn dude youre pretty intolerant. after pseudo-scientific (or politically justified) racism, you now go to the same sexism. i can show you 10 studies that say men are dumber, there are more intelligent women, or whatnot.

you understand that its expected to have "outliers" in scientific studies? just by pure definition, some scientists will come to plain wrong conclusions. p

damn dude youre pretty intolerant. after pseudo-scientific (or politically justified) racism, you now go to the same sexism. i can show you 10 studies that say men are dumber, there are more intelligent women, or whatnot.

you understand that its expected to have "outliers" in scientific studies? just by pure definition, some scientists will come to plain wrong conclusions. p

damn dude youre pretty intolerant. after pseudo-scientific (or politically justified) racism, you now go to the same sexism. i can show you 10 studies that say men are dumber, there are more intelligent women, or whatnot.

you understand that its expected to have "outliers" in scientific studies? just by pure definition, some scientists will come to plain wrong conclusions. p less than 0.05 seems pretty accepted, so, by definition (and omitting all the other problems of those tests) 5% of studies are horseshit.

overall, men and women always were tested seperately, so that both groups could be normalized to mean IQ 100.

but, lets go to your "article" (which should mention in the title, if the results were trustworthy, that the average woman is a lot more intelligent, since probably 90% of the population is in the area where women are more intelligent):

QUOTE 1:
"Both figures deliberately use zero suppression (don’t show the full 0 to 100 percentage range) to exaggerate the visual effect, which is legitimate, because otherwise the effect would be very difficult to see"

aka "its not practically important", if at all its statistically relevant, but not really because the sample size was either too small or so big that literally any difference would be significant.

QUOTE 2:
"The 42 males have a total brain volume ml of 1354 ± 111 and 47 females a total brain volume ml of 1215 ± 105. Reite et al. BMC Psychiatry 2010 10:79 doi:10.1186/1471-244X-10-79. By the way, I am not making a brain/intelligence association here (though there is a significant positive correlation)"

seriously? i am not saying, but i am saying?





and no, i am not gonna look that original paper up on my uni-account.

im an engineer

and op, you say you need an IQ of over 110 to study engineering?

and just to reiterate, you acknowledge that the vast majority of people is made up of people with IQs of 90-110, where women are more intelligent according to your article? let me correct my statement: roughly 60%, not 90% of people fall into that group.

dumb people are more likely men, so up until an IQ of roughly 115, or 85% of the population, women are more intelligent. this is kind of neglected in the article to make a provocative, non-scientific point.


good "positivist" science is value-free. but you only post biased and bad science on here, produced by scientific outlaws who just say something to promote their racism/sexism under the label of "scientific freedom".

horseshit. absolute horseshit.

that brain size argument, oh my god.

so taller people (who ceteris paribus have larger brains) are more intelligent?

I suspect part of it is that men don't get pregnant and put off or give up on their education to raise families as often.

I suspect that you'll find that societies where access to reproductive services are more available have a smaller difference in gender distribution in scientific professions than societies where women can't get those same services as easily.

This is a mere hypothesis.

lol youre definitely trying too hard at this point, im outta here to go write one of my real life engineering finals! woo because real life engineering is radically different than this weird perception of it that you have

anyways, im real sorry that this all means so much to you. hopefully you get some sort of weird satisfaction out of this thread. idk what youre even talking about anymore.

Bomber_BoBHaha serious? Bio is pretty hard because at the upper level all the kids who take classes want to go to some competitive grad program so literally everyone shoots for an A.

Take a look at engineering... So many kids do that shit and get by with Just C's and low B's because they know they can land a job. Sorry to get you off your high horse but engineering really isn't that hard.

So a class where everyone gets an A is hard but a class where everyone gets C's isn't hard? Nice logic. I bet getting a C+ average in senior year engineering takes the same effort as getting an A- average senior year bio.

Engineering is definitely in the top 3 hardest undergraduate programs you can do, Bio is a joke.

Most females are brought up discouraged from the sciences because society forces them to put an emphasis on being non-threatening. Intellectual threats included. Thankfully it's getting better, but there's still work to be done in terms of normalizing stereotypically feminine behavior in males which feminism doesn't seem to care too much about.

AT-ATI never said that they aren't smart enough, at one point in here i said they are just as apt. I'm just saying we are wired different and that's why women aren't drawn to engineering as men are. It has nothing to do with mental aptitude.

Sorry, I didn't see that.

Regardless, what I (and others) in this thread are arguing are that it's social pressure that draws/forces women away from engineering, not their inability to succeed at it.

Feilination. I really dont care if you think im racist or sexist. My goal here is to show that unbiased, innocent science itself is by your categorization both racist and sexist, but that is something we have to learn to live with. Your goal is to promote lies, and deny the truth, presumably so you appear more innocent to yourself while you jerk off in front of a mirror. You are anti science, and anti intellectual. Nobody gives a shit about your misinterpretations and data massaging. Youre making the issue seem more complicated than it is, in order to fool people into purchasing your agenda and believing youre smarter than you actually are. You are actually the sexist racist here, because you are willing to lie about these issues while im not. Im a tool of science, youre one of politics.

Feilination. I really dont care if you think im racist or sexist. My goal here is to show that unbiased, innocent science itself is by your categorization both racist and sexist, but that is something we have to learn to live with. Your goal is to promote lies, and deny the truth, presumably so you appear more innocent to yourself while you jerk off in front of a mirror. You are anti science, and anti intellectual. Nobody gives a shit about your misinterpretations and data massaging. Youre making the issue seem more complicated than it is, in order to fool people into purchasing your agenda and believing youre smarter than you actually are. You are actually the sexist racist here, because you are willing to lie about these issues while im not. Im a tool of science, youre one of politics.

Also what the op article shows, feilimation, is not that the avg woman intelligence is higher than males. It shows that men are borderline retarded and borderline genius at a higher rate than women. If you disregard the people with below avg intelligence and look at people with iqs of 90 and up, the avg male will have a noticiably higher iq than the avg female. And when you look at genius range iqs, there are significantly more men than women in that range.
Not so fond of data massaging anymore, are we, feilination?

DrZoidbergI'm about to graduate with a degree in chemistry and there's 44 chem majors graduating, I'd say it's a 50/50 split, or maybe 60/40 M/F. But it's not like one girl and the rest guys.

I'm studying chemistry