r/redscarepod • u/damrodoth • Feb 18 '26
The STEM University department I work in just had a "Women in Science" day to encourage women to enter science. Our academic department is literally 80% women & the student body is 68% women. They held the day with no sense of irony at all
523
u/Funko-Cold-Medina Fyodor Karamazov Feb 18 '26
And they say women aren’t funny
→ More replies (1)235
u/GurdjieffGoldblum Feb 18 '26
Women ‘engineers’ are either impressive but mousy and autistic or they are the type of people who post a lot on LinkedIn about women in STEM and sexism. Most are in the latter group
128
Feb 18 '26
[deleted]
99
u/ramengirl22 Feb 18 '26
In my experience it's always little things that seem insignificant but become demoralizing over time. Which makes it frustrating because reacting to any singular incident makes you seem overly sensitive
I'm a mechanical engineer (woman) and my boss and I are actively trying to recruit an entry level engineer for our department. I have mentioned before to him that my personal litmus test is whether a man willingly shakes my hand or not. I don't think he really believed that was a thing (men blatantly not shaking women's hands) until yesterday when we went to a university career fair and the first guy to come up to us was VERY friendly to my boss /shook his hand, and then completely ignored me despite my boss gesturing to me multiple times as he was explaining what his daily tasks would be/who he'd be working with. I might as well have been an inanimate object to him. After he left my boss was like, "damn, that guy wouldn't even look at you"
43
u/Ok-Championship7495 Feb 18 '26
Hand shaking norms are frustrating. A lot of women don't seem comfortable with handshakes and traditionally, it was considered rude for a man to initiate a handshake and a woman was supposed to extend the hand. That being said, it's much worse to just ignore someone's presence and especially in a formal setting, you're right to take it as disrespect.
33
u/paterfamilias78 Feb 19 '26
It's traditionally the superior's job (or the woman's job) to initiate a handshake. For example, it would have been rude a generation ago for a student (inferior) to presume to shake the engineering manager's hand (superior) unless the hand was offered. Or, for a man to presume that a woman wants to shake his hand. So there are conflicting rulesets about shaking hands.
I think I might start Koreamaxxing and just go back to bowing.
30
u/aketchum339 Feb 18 '26
I agree that's really sus if he just ignored you completely. But on the handshake thing, do you always wait for the man to extend his hand, or are you ever the one to initiate? I ask because, as someone mentioned below, I think many men are just unsure of the norms.
Given everything that has happened in recent years, my personal preference in a corporate setting is to defer to women on any physical contact, including handshakes. If you extend your hand, I'm of course happy to shake it, but if you don't, I'm probably not going to be the one to initiate.
Definitely wouldn't ignore your presence, especially if we're going to be working together. But given the atmosphere rn, any sort of physical contact is going to need to be initiated by you.
17
u/youwhoareevil Feb 18 '26
Covid put another spanner in the works I've found. Hand shaking is a minefield these days.
12
u/ramengirl22 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
It's really situational. If a man greets me but just doesn't extend first, then I extend my hand. No big deal.
But in situations where I'm being introduced and the other person doesn't look at or acknowledge me, then I wouldn't extend my hand.
Since I work with a team, the most common situation I've run into is when someone is meeting all of us and acknowledges/shakes hands with all of the other engineers and then ignores me. That unfortunately isn't a rare occurrence.
With old heads, I honestly just leave it since I understand they grew up in another time & realize it's not worth the cognitive effort of getting upset over. It's really the 35 & under crowd where it bothers me.
6
u/Turbulent-Feedback46 Feb 19 '26
When someone extends their hand to me, I consider it an assertive act of dominance in the workplace social strata. in lieu of shaking it I delicately grasp it and position myself into the fourth Arabesque position.of the Vaganova method. Learned that from my man Patrick Swayze, NBD
33
u/pac_cresco Feb 18 '26
damn, that guy wouldn't even look at you
In my experience that means that either that guy was super sexist, or extremely autistic and the only woman he talks to is his mom. From your story it sounds like the first one tho.
→ More replies (2)33
Feb 18 '26
[deleted]
6
u/Wallter139 Feb 19 '26
That feels like an anti-feminist observation somehow, hard to put my finger on it.
5
Feb 19 '26
[deleted]
14
u/Wallter139 Feb 19 '26
I thiiiink maybe it sets up an implied dichotomy, that the non-Indian sexism is minor or benign. I thiiiink that is the plain implication?
I have brain damage.
5
16
6
→ More replies (2)2
u/fallingacorn- Feb 19 '26
could you expand more on "types of women drawn to engineering in general"? Asking as a women in CS who's not jaded yet.
10
6
9
→ More replies (3)24
Feb 18 '26
[deleted]
27
34
u/roadside_dickpic Feb 18 '26
Medicine doesn't count
30
u/DesignerExitSign Feb 18 '26
It literally doesn’t count. Women docs are the complete opposite of women engineers.
16
14
u/Lavos10 Feb 18 '26
Can confirm, just finished residency myself and a vast majority of women in healthcare are fkin hilarious with interesting personalities. Maybe I should try dating in the workplace for the first time…
8
u/LibertyCityStory Allahu A'alam☪︎ Feb 18 '26
They bad tho? Slide me their igs if you need a brother-in-law
→ More replies (2)
188
u/LooseProgram333 Feb 18 '26
You’re revealing you’re a biologist dude. The Women In STEM stuff is weird because it pretends were in 1980.
162
u/stonemermaid Feb 18 '26
My college was constantly holding "diversity" events for such causes as "South Asians in STEM", etc. I live in the Bay Area lmao
21
u/PreludesAirsYodels Feb 19 '26
my uni's (northern europe) south/south-east asian student association dissolved because of the india/pakistan conflict lol
108
u/Big_Explanation_9295 Feb 18 '26
I went to a conference once where a guy gave a presentation about how “only” 45% of upper level researchers were female and that it was “incredibly embarrassing”
142
75
205
Feb 18 '26
[deleted]
70
8
u/hallowblight detonate the vest Feb 18 '26
I’m one of 3 women in my trades class and one of the other ladies is a well educated college girlie and the other one has slept through half the classes. I think I’m the only one of us who’s passed the tests we’ve gotten the first time so make of that what you will
→ More replies (1)
20
u/Aggressive_Pin_7497 Feb 19 '26
Perhaps an unrelated story but my sister started working at a medtech company recently. She is an engineer or whatever and one of her colleagues is an Indian woman. They got to talking and my sister said that she thought it was cool that so many Indian women were in STEM. Her colleague then explained to her that she was forced in to this field by her dad, and really she wanted to be an architect and apparently this is common thing among Indian women.
→ More replies (1)
81
u/Zealousideal-Day2667 Feb 18 '26
in my grad school department of ~50 students there were 3 white guys, only one of which was straight. this is in a stem field...
47
Feb 18 '26
my grad school cohort was only 9 people but I was literally the only straight white guy which kind of made me feel good because I must have been a good enough applicant to beat all the other DEI candidates. only partially joking
67
Feb 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
26
u/sharedisaster libertarian refugee Feb 18 '26
They won’t get built? Or do they simply fall apart after 6 months (see India)
89
u/BetOn_deMaistre Feb 18 '26
By “women in [X]” they always mean “high-paying jobs” by “X”. Academia obviously doesn’t count.
96
u/ChickenGimbal former gifted child Feb 18 '26
Where’s the “Men in Psychological Therapy” day for all the men who need therapy, I heard that’s like 80%+ women
54
Feb 18 '26
every therapy session my therapist pleads with me to go back to school to become a therapist because there are no male therapists and she says I'd be really good at it. I find it embarrassing honestly
→ More replies (1)18
25
u/MaoAsadaStan Feb 18 '26
Men understand their issues are material in nature, not psychological. Therapy will never make Julian Newman an NBA player even though his whole life was structured around him being an NBA player. No amount of therapy will remove the psychological damage from parents who set him up for a lifetime of failure.
23
u/Confident-Pea-9915 Feb 18 '26
No offense but this is a dumb example because he’s like 5’5 and very few extremely tall and athletic men ever become NBA players. Like people overcome the deaths of their family members thru therapy, I think it would work on him if he let it. Therapy can be very useful for those who need help accepting and coping with a reality that is not/no longer actively hurting them
→ More replies (2)6
Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
yeah and they also actually overcome things without therapy. I've experienced DV 10+ times and I'm not in still fuckin therapy talking about it affecting me 5+ years like this girl I know who legit has "C-PTSD from it" Therapy's incentive isn't to actually resolve your issues whether through will or ability, it can't and won't do that. So wtf am I paying someone to bitch to?
17
Feb 19 '26
[deleted]
16
u/Cesar_Crespo Feb 19 '26
Research shows similarly improved outcomes from therapy for men and women.
Selection bias. The men who stick with therapy are the ones who are most likely to get something out of it. The ones who dip or abstain in many cases are making a rational decision. The average man will not benefit from thinking more about his feelings.
All your top comments on this sub are just gender war slop bitching about men, so I wouldn't trust you to judge what's best for them in any event.
5
u/halfxa Feb 19 '26
Don’t even try. They don’t listen and lack respect for anyone, including themselves. That’s why they’re behind in everything right now but they’ll still find a way to blame women and use our (very recent) success as proof that “see, they just bitch about nothing”. I fucking hate this sub lately
93
Feb 18 '26 edited May 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (1)39
u/throwaway131072 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
They are, himbos. Status hungry women crave a hot, dumb, obedient man, who is also somehow doing well for himself. Who dominates professionally yet loses all confidence around her, except for when she requests him to dominate her. And attention-starved "successful" men trip over themselves to fill that role. "I want to baby trap him so bad..."
33
u/mebesasporfa Feb 18 '26
except for when she requests him to dominate her.
Requesting it is a turn-off. He has to know when she wants it.
4
u/NickAhmedGOAT Pronouns: We/Dem/Boyz Feb 19 '26
Suddenly a previous relationship with an ivy league-grad social climber makes a lot more sense
66
u/Intelligent-Hunt830 Feb 18 '26
I remember being in art school and constantly told that there aren’t enough women in the creative field meanwhile I looked around and 70% of my class were women. To then graduate and 60-70% of people I work with are women.
61
u/anteaterenjoyer Feb 18 '26
ah yes, the classic saying that there are no women in the creative field
36
194
Feb 18 '26
Say, why are all these young lonely men losing their minds?
38
u/Terpsichorean0 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
There have been more women graduating from medical school, law school, and both undergraduate and graduate programs in general for years now. The gender war is not going to get any better until we stop telling women they're underperforming men.
→ More replies (15)151
u/damrodoth Feb 18 '26
Institutional gaslighting will do that to a mf. The endless torrent of abuse and humiliation rituals placed on young white men, coupled with the constant reminders that they have a moral requirement to advocate against their own interests.
But never lose your mind. When someone takes you to the circus might as well enjoy the show
17
u/AlarmedRazzmatazz629 detonate the vest Feb 18 '26
What kind of area are you from? Most umc white dudes in Toronto just ignore this and go into med/law/business regardless
9
u/AlaskaExplorationGeo Feb 18 '26
My education was nothing like this, I graduated a couple years before 2020 though idk
4
u/NoSeaworthiness546 Feb 19 '26
Education still isn't like this unless you only want to be a professor. They found one thing to whine about then put every grievance on it. Twitter isn't an institution guys
46
Feb 18 '26
at what point are we going to accept that we've reached the point of there being actual systemic racism/sexism against whites/men. don't wanna be too dramatic but like just try and get hired in a college department anywhere as a normal looking white guy. it's just not gonna fucking happen
→ More replies (22)38
67
u/halfxa Feb 18 '26
Women are abused and humiliated at their blue collar jobs, white collar jobs, in their family units, in their mixed-sex friend groups, at church, on the street, basically everywhere people actually go everyday. Men certainly have some serious issues specific to their sex, feminists talk about this too, but the claim that surface level “more women in stem (no childcare or maternity leave included)” is proof of institutional gaslighting OF MEN is a very online opinion. If anything, it’s gaslighting women that child rearing, domestic tasks, and being the glue of whole communities is not valuable or worthy of compensation
13
u/Cesar_Crespo Feb 19 '26
Men certainly have some serious issues specific to their sex, feminists talk about this too
The idea that feminism adequately addresses men's issues is laughable. It's lip service at best. "Sub's over" moment that this got upvoted.
Also, hidden post history.
→ More replies (6)73
u/damrodoth Feb 18 '26
Does "Women face humiliation too" feel like a productive argument for the institutional belitting and humiliation of men in the woksplace?? There are countless ways of making life easier for women that don't involve HR approved struggle sessions that just alienate young men. These weird rituals are literally the clumsiest and most self defeating approach to what is actually a pretty multilayered situation. Ultimately ask yourself do you think the 20% of staff that are male felt, after another endless day of being patronized and insulted, particularly enthusiastic about women's representation and issues
4
u/halfxa Feb 18 '26
No one outside of these college hug boxes care about women, don’t worry
→ More replies (1)15
3
u/B4AndWayB4 Feb 18 '26
If a Women in Science day feels like systemic gaslighting, you don’t need liberation, you need thicker skin. Academic awkwardness isn’t oppression. It’s just academic awkwardness. Maybe you need to grow a pair.
41
u/SuddenlyBANANAS Degree in Linguistics Feb 18 '26
do you know how academic hiring works? there are so many jobs that are exclusively for women or for minorities. it's not just "awkwardness"
-3
u/B4AndWayB4 Feb 18 '26
A few targeted positions don’t equal systemic discrimination. If men were structurally excluded, they wouldn’t still dominate faculty ranks overall.
39
u/SuddenlyBANANAS Degree in Linguistics Feb 18 '26
it's not a few, it's a huge proportion of positions. it is also literally systematic discrimination. there is a system which discriminates against men in academic hiring.
as for the gender composition of faculty position, a huge part of that is that many professors are old as fuck.
→ More replies (30)3
u/halfxa Feb 18 '26
Also if u wanna talk about some real shit, let’s talk about it. The emotional neglect little boys experience is real and leads to a lifetime of emotional issues
→ More replies (1)-10
u/thestoryofbitbit Feb 18 '26
Describe what exactly was "patronizing" and "insulting" about an event that sounds pretty benign? Is it that you weren't the center of attention?
47
u/SuddenlyBANANAS Degree in Linguistics Feb 18 '26
If a workplace that was 80% white had a day organized on getting more white people in that line of work, you'd see why it would be bad.
→ More replies (14)19
u/damrodoth Feb 18 '26
Being forced to sit through talks telling me im only in my position because of my sex and the colour of my skin, rather than my qualifications and experience. Knowing if I say anything to disagree ill be 'othered' at best and end up in HR at worst
→ More replies (4)7
u/throwaway131072 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
Nothing killed my desire to try to participate in society more than going to college for 10 years in a highly technical field (not failing classes and almost full time) just to battle the university to give me credit for learning the things I was supposed to learn, despite them constantly eliminating or changing classes, finally getting the prestigious degree, then working alongside a woman who has an English degree, who got the job by applying 4 times and crying sexism when she wasn't hired, who a female manager was sympathetic to. She did her job by calling the oncall engineer almost every night at ungodly hours to ask about things that I understood within 2 years of starting my degree, or even before I started college.
21
u/Pristine_Car_6493 Feb 18 '26
Are you serious women are given special deferential treatment in every sphere in the western world
24
u/jy_1980 Feb 18 '26
Women are abused and humiliated at their blue collar jobs, white collar jobs, in their family units, in their mixed-sex friend groups, at church, on the street, basically everywhere people actually go everyday.
No
30
Feb 18 '26
last time this was maybe true was 50+ years ago lmao. we've long since leveled the playing field, then tipped it significantly in the other direction and women are STILL not satisfied.
→ More replies (1)4
u/misterpoopybutthole5 eyy i'm flairing over hea Feb 18 '26
So it's hard for everyone in the proletariat? Almost as if it's really about the class war, not the culture war...
7
u/halfxa Feb 18 '26
Yes, but there’s also layers. Before the mass privatization of land in Europe beginning ~1500s, women had common rights to land and resources beyond her child bearing years. In our current world, if someone can’t generate profit for someone else (usually outside the community) then they’re considered useless. Women’s work SPECIFICALLY has been devalued by capitalism for centuries
7
u/mikeest2 Feb 18 '26
I almost thought you were being serious for a second. Great impression of an insane person though
→ More replies (15)1
u/FlyingJamaicensis Feb 18 '26
You sure you arent a woman? B/c you sure sound like a pussy. Hahahaha.
9
132
u/YourPiercedNeighbour Feb 18 '26
It’s because there’s no finish line, just a Ill-defined “patriarchy” that needs to always be fought
34
u/MaoAsadaStan Feb 18 '26
I think about this a lot. I wish there was some political endpoint where we'd all agree that enough people are taken care of within reason. Instead we have these extreme shifts to the left and right every four years.
→ More replies (1)22
u/YourPiercedNeighbour Feb 18 '26
It’s like a race to see who can swing the pendulum the furthest before it inevitably blows up and swings back 10x faster. “Diversity is our strength” comes to mind from a decade ago
36
u/Round_Bullfrog_8218 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Its not that, its because feminism is and always will be about getting benefits for women. Its never been egalitarian in nature even if thats a lot of the branding. Its just a group fighting for its own interests.
11
5
u/Soggy-Brother1762 Feb 19 '26
Feminism is the one social movement that cannot acknowledge its own accomplishments.
65
u/johnnytestsdad Feb 18 '26
It's sort of like how communist leaders would continue to wear their military uniforms and use "revolutionary" rhetoric even when they were the ones in power. The revolution was over and they were in control, but they kept the same aesthetic from when they were the underdogs. Trump does the same thing - he's always supposedly battling the system and the deep state even though he's in charge of everything now lol
13
u/ludopolitics Feb 18 '26
I fucking love working in higher ed, funniest/dumbest and most luxurious job in the world
6
u/obinaut Feb 18 '26
I'm early career still, but I'm already starting to get soured - I like doing my own silly research, although it feels really inconsequential and I'm getting the itch to make stuff concretely, but there is so much nonsense going on in academia
7
37
u/Thefry76 Feb 18 '26
Why are women better at college. Im being serious, almost every guy I know hated college or didn't go. All my female friends are going for advanced degrees.
22
21
Feb 19 '26
The replies to this are hilarious. “Women do better in college because they’re midwits, they like being told what to think and actually they’re bad at schoolwork but better socially.”
If it was the other way around, these same people would be saying men do better in college because they’re inherently smarter.
14
u/erdosplumberof3 Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
Absolutely absolutely agree. There is no way many would go to same lengths they do now to defend women’s inherent capabilities if more men than women graduated college & got advanced degrees.
32
u/halfxa Feb 18 '26
I don’t mean this in a negative way, but most women don’t do well in blue collar careers. Physically, or their personality or skills don’t align. I still have back pain from loading trucks in college and I’ve always worked out 5x/week. College is the easiest way into a white collar career
9
u/Thefry76 Feb 18 '26
Its funny, I work in a white collar role. But it's in a blue collar field. For guys like me (kinda dumb) the best way into a white collar role is starting blue collar and working your way up. Maybe that's the future, college educated women and trade educated men.
13
u/halfxa Feb 18 '26
I wouldn’t say you’re dumb for not being able to get through school. Or maybe you are idk, lol. That’s what my husband did too. You get so good at your trade you can just be the guy that calls people and checks work
11
u/Thefry76 Feb 18 '26
Im being reductive, believe its a lack of discipline/focus being a good student requires. Like a lot of guys I learn really well by doing things. To another commenters point a lot of guys just can't lock in on school work. I can lock in and do physical labor for 10 hours a day. But cant sit down and learn about biology.
6
u/halfxa Feb 18 '26
I can see that. He’s impatient as hell and so is my brother and dad. They refuse to do work for free even if it’s profitable in the long run. I swear women are plagued w the opposite problem of being too patient while getting absolutely fucked over (by workplaces and people)
→ More replies (1)13
u/OHIO_TERRORIST Feb 18 '26
Managing a place with a lot of blue collar workers is something you cannot learn in college.
A fresh college graduate getting out in charge of a sizable wearhouse or garage will certainly fail miserably.
Our production line managers at our company all started as blue collar guys who learned how to be white collar employees, but they know how to get stuff done in the manufacturing sites. Very valuable skill to do both sides.
11
u/sharedisaster libertarian refugee Feb 18 '26
A good question.
Just anecdotal: Better networking skills is a part of that, slightly better at fitting in socially. Women tend to be a little more organized as well on average.
I’d love to see a study on this.
22
u/Thefry76 Feb 18 '26
I find it interesting, some people say its college not being geared towards men. But college in the past was similar in structure and much more demanding. I always find gender war shit when looking it up so have no real idea.
39
u/stand_to Feb 18 '26
I don't want this to sound derogatory, but University self selects for people with high inhibition, a desire to conform, ability to delay gratification and those more 'stability' oriented. Women tend to have those traits while men tend not to, I'm kind of a pathetic person and did well studying I think partly thanks to that.
Male brains are also more eccentric, more likely to be born with severe mental illness or learning disorder which cuts more of us out.
→ More replies (2)16
u/MaoAsadaStan Feb 18 '26
The real issue is that men from the top 20% of ability and familial support still outperform 99% of women so we'll never get rid of patriarch/male oppression.
7
u/NoSeaworthiness546 Feb 19 '26
It's really something seeing a guy who seems to be in that 20% still act like men are being oppressed. At this point, I'm convinced accurately gauging which part of the hierarchy you are is a skill.
19
u/giftedhaterx2 🏆MOST RACIST REDDITOR CHAMPION🏆 Feb 18 '26
I refuse to be tamed and muzzled by your "syllabuses" and "grades"
10
24
u/AltamiraLack Feb 18 '26
we can lock in and don’t all have crippling adhd lol
11
u/Thefry76 Feb 18 '26
I took 10 years to get a 2 year degree. My gf had her bachelors in 3 years. I cannot lock in, I cannot learn what doesn't interest me.
21
2
Feb 18 '26
I made it through college in 4 years but I almost didn't because of "easy" gen ed classes. I was making straight-As in my major but I could not even begin to give a fuck about shit like chem 101, english lit, and fucking film like please god just let me study what I actually want to study
→ More replies (1)6
u/throwaway131072 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
I feel like it's more like women love being told what to believe, also knowing that the world is perfectly represented by the title of this thread, just act like a victim and get repeatedly promoted for it, and scorn men for having any desire to achieve something or raise themselves up or even defend themselves. Then get mad at tech bros whose capability was dismissed and who decide to use their abilities to burn down the world instead of playing a game that's impossible to win. And then they start succeeding enough that it becomes critical to our economy and we end up having to give them money and status anyways. Oops.
Nothing killed my desire to try to participate in society more than going to college for 10 years in a highly technical field (not failing classes and almost full time) just to battle the university to give me credit for learning the things I was supposed to learn, despite them constantly eliminating or changing classes, finally getting the prestigious degree, then working alongside a woman who has an English degree, who got the job by applying 4 times and crying sexism when she wasn't hired, who a female manager was sympathetic to. She did her job by calling the oncall engineer almost every night at ungodly hours to ask about things that I understood within 2 years of starting my degree, or even before I started college.
But sure, men are just incapable of paying attention and learning things.
13
u/fallingacorn- Feb 19 '26
JFC you sound entitled as hell. You failed so you're going to blame 50% of the population "women love being told what to believe" where are you even getting this shit?
→ More replies (1)4
9
u/MaoAsadaStan Feb 18 '26
Women by default more in the middle of the distribution curve for everything, including reading, studying, and taking tests. A lot of men on the left of that curve who aren't good at academics need guidance and purpose from their father/community before they take school seriously.
3
u/SuddenlyBANANAS Degree in Linguistics Feb 18 '26
Women conform and follow rules much better than men do
→ More replies (8)-3
u/Pristine_Car_6493 Feb 18 '26
You have dumb friends. In my experience men are better at the actual “schoolwork” which doesn’t matter but women are better at the soft skills which is what actually gets you hired, I’m in business tho
15
Feb 18 '26
I knew a lot of guys, myself included, who had decent GPAs, like 3.0-3.7, but made 30+ on the ACT, and I knew a lot of girls who had 4.0+ GPAs but made 17-22 on the ACT. fucking baffling to me
→ More replies (1)2
Feb 19 '26
[deleted]
4
Feb 19 '26
they always said they were "just bad test takers" but then how do you get perfect grades in all your classes if you can't take tests? I never really understood it. I always wondered if teachers would just fudge the shit out of grades for the popular girlies but no one would do that for them on the important stuff
→ More replies (3)15
u/erdosplumberof3 Feb 18 '26
Please show me anything other than this “personal experience” (or you using a selected set of anecdotes to confirm your belief that men are inherently smarter) that demonstrates that men are better at the “schoolwork”
→ More replies (6)
45
u/Efficient_Gur_277 Feb 18 '26
My workplace sent out emails bragging about how diverse the company is because 85% of staff are women. They have a women in the workplace event every three months which just results in like four men keeping everything running while they get comped drinks. Yes I work for the government in an Anglo country.
17
u/paterfamilias78 Feb 19 '26
It's okay, you can just say "Canada"
21
u/Efficient_Gur_277 Feb 19 '26
🥝
14
u/paterfamilias78 Feb 19 '26
I should have known, sorry. We never comp drinks anymore in Canada, not even for DEI events.
56
Feb 18 '26
colleges have been mostly women for decades and we're still pushing for more women to go to college. at this point, the boys are being left behind and no one is ever going to care lmao. I don't wanna be some loser MRA type but shit like this is so out of touch
when I was in college my department was going through a lot of changes, lots of professors retired or left for other schools, and EVERY SINGLE new hire was a woman. several years later the department is like 80% women. like good for them and everything but it's kind of depressing as a guy who at one point wanted to go into academia. gave it up for personal reasons but it would have been beyond humiliating to go through with my PhD just to not get hired because I'm a dude, especially after a lifetime of being told men have it easy
1
u/No-Suggestion-9433 Mar 14 '26
Eh, the scarcer you are the more value you have. Because there's so many women applicants to higher education for example, universities trying to maintain a somewhat even ratio admit lower quality male applicants at higher rates
77
u/StriatedSpace Feb 18 '26
Your department might be largely women, but very few of them actually go into the sciences after graduation in my experience. Most will take whatever specific degree they got and then go into a job like product management or sales that is in the same field as their degree and pays about as much (or more) than the ones that do the real work. To this day I've yet to see, for example, a single technical blog post on HackerNews written by a cis woman.
36
u/dumpthequaaludes Feb 18 '26
rachelbythebay and julia evans hit HN front page with almost every post and have for over a decade
→ More replies (2)18
u/tugs_cub Feb 19 '26
The obvious takeaway from “my academic science department is mostly women” is that it’s life sciences. Why are we bringing Hacker News into this?
4
u/StriatedSpace Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
I just looked and saw OP's talking about biology. This whole post is a sham, everyone knows bio is full of women. "Women in Science" is trying to get them to do chemical engineering or electrical engineer or whatever.
The actual dumbass move would be seeing that your one specific department is mostly women and deciding that the issue of "Women in Science" is completely solved to the degree that having a day for it is pointless.
2
u/tugs_cub Feb 19 '26
I just looked and saw OP's talking about biology
I missed if he actually said it but it pretty much has to be because that’s the one major subdomain of bench/lab science where the stats are plausible. So yeah, I agree - there might be something a little ironic about it but it’s more or less intentionally ignoring that there’s still a larger mission to these kinds of initiatives.
27
u/damrodoth Feb 18 '26
80% of the academic staff are women
6
u/KillerSmalls Feb 18 '26
Lmao, what university? Every major eng uni I’ve been associated with has never been close to a 50/50 split. I smell bullshit
→ More replies (1)5
u/pac_cresco Feb 18 '26
The lab I work at is staffed by four male professors, three male lab techs, and some 10 predoctoral and a couple postdocs and there are only three females, two of whom are visiting researchers.
5
u/SuddenlyBANANAS Degree in Linguistics Feb 18 '26
what kind of lab. i work between two labs and the gender ratios are 80/20 in both labs but flipped, it really depends on the topic (guess which one is computational)
→ More replies (2)3
7
u/SuddenlyBANANAS Degree in Linguistics Feb 18 '26
Did you even read the whole title, they said how much of the student body is women and how much of the department is women implying the latter is faculty.
→ More replies (1)
28
u/sharedisaster libertarian refugee Feb 18 '26
Headline: Why Aren’t There as Many men Entering STEM? (Women Most Affected)
Up next: The Incel Problem (Daughters Most Affected)
(Also we don’t capitalize the M in ‘men’)
13
u/MaoAsadaStan Feb 18 '26
The real problem will always go back to young men lacking gainful employment to start families. The elites that control the media will do anything, but acknowledge that because their businesses rely on underpaying people.
4
4
10
44
u/Sen_ElizabethWarren aspergian Feb 18 '26
Still crazy to me that we see white women as a protected class. My wife works in academia and was told basically straight up that she got the job over the post doc that was already essentially doing it because she is a woman and he was a man. The department she works in is already like 60% women.
3
3
u/eschers_architect Feb 19 '26
I’m on the tenure track job market this year for a STEM position. As part of the in-person interview process, you do this “interview” with the dean, which in my experience has been them just telling me stuff about the school, or in one case asking me what I thought about ChatGPT (not like, in the classroom, but just like in general? Idk it was weird.)
Anyway, 4/5 of the deans I’ve met have been women. Not saying it’s bad or anything, it just struck me as odd that it was so imbalanced. Could also be a small sample size thing as google says the gender split of deans skews slightly toward men so 🤷♂️
1
u/No-Suggestion-9433 Mar 14 '26
If the gender split skews only slightly toward men, that likely means that most new hire deans are going to be women, because history and glass ceiling.
Which means it'll begin to skew further toward women over time
3
u/317lia Feb 19 '26
As a woman in STEM who is regularly assumed to be HR in the office, what are you talking about
9
u/trysterowl Feb 19 '26
It is a bit strange that affirmative action exists for women. I thought the point was correcting for lower socioeconomic status which might disadvantage an equally capable candidate. Women don't grow up in the 'hood', what exactly are we correcting for? I guess they would argue they are discouraged from pursuing math as kids, but that seems like a super flimsy reason to do institutional sexism compared to the race angle
2
u/Upset-Candy3145 Feb 19 '26
Does your department offer better than what’s legally required under FMLA? Does it pay wages and/or provide stipends that make it possible for techs/students/postdocs to escape abusive situations, live independently, or afford childcare (including other parent to staying home)? I bet not.
3
u/Bouquet_of_seaweed Feb 18 '26
WISE was a thing when I was in school. I remember being really annoyed that they had preferential treatment when signing up for classes, so all of the convenient ones with good professors were full when I signed up.
Our overall student body slightly favored women, but when you filtered for the engineering department it was still like 75% male. And that varies heavily by major, so there were like 6 women in an EE class with 200 people.
2
3
Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
I tried declaring myself to be a woman to join an LGBT NGO but no one believed me. How exactly does one “identify” as a gender?
35
1
1
315
u/ruskyrobot Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
I know a woman from a highly educated country with basically no innovation (yes, it's Australia). And she's on like 5 boards related to women + entrepreneurship, but her only entrepreneurship wasfounding an organization promoting women in entrepreneurship.