this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

They're grouping non-binary people as female and pretending like this isn't a problem for presenting a statistical analysis?

Who the fuck gave the go ahead for doing this research?

There should be separate reports on non-binary discrimination and female discrimination not combining the two and labeling them women. (in case you're unaware, males and females can both be non-binary so grouping non binary people from either sex into "women" completely de-legitimizes the research)

Completely unprofessional.

https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-statistics-progress-and-challenges#:~:text=Women%20in%20STEM%20statistics%20%E2%80%93%20Conclusion&text=Overall%2C%20the%20percentage%20of%20female,with%20women%20making%20up%2026%25.

[–] isyasad 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They do include the effect size of including non-binary students when they write "(nb. Non-binary students account for 0.3% of this total)" etc. so the impact on the actual data is shown, if you're concerned about the statistical analysis. It also does make sense to group them together in this context as they are both minorities in STEM. However the way the article is written makes it clear that including non-binary students was an afterthought; if it was clear in all the data and headings that the data is for both non-binary and female students with the interpretation that they are looking at just "students who aren't men" then it would have been a lot better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We cannot do effective corollary research if groups are not independently researched with their own data, a 'minimum impact' is still an impact, one which can be used to portray a larger or smaller effect than there is between the actual groups being compared against, especially when there's a distinct call of 'white males' being a problem with no determination of class, culture or variance of religious vs non religious.

People are not blocks, they don't vote as blocks they don't work as blocks and they most assuredly do not behave as blocks. It's important to specify, separate, and effectively research each group and sub group in order to determine the veracity rather than just applying a claim to a useful and popular current enemy, e.g. 'white male'.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Does you website you linked have any relationship with the research being discussed in the article?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How is it unprofessional? It's just a different data set, there's nothing inherently professional or not about it.

Another way to say it would be "non-male" sexual discrimination. Which makes perfect sense given who are generally the target of that type of discrimination.

It's just a statistic, dude. If you're looking at it as something it isn't, that's on you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Making wide claims on entire groups based on inferential data is inherently unprofessional. They didn't stop at observing they're making claims without evidence to back it up.

How one person feels about something does not automatically mean that someone was intentionally or even unintentionally hurting them.

That is the issue at heart here.

[–] topinambour_rex -2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The conclusion are the same that you group or not : men in stem are male chauvinists who doesn't tolerate those not like them and feel the need to oppress those.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Thank you for completely missing the point and being a direct example of the issues I was discussing.

[–] Cosmicomical 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah let's level the field at the lowest point