Ho ho ho, this should go down like a grenade in a china shop. Note that I don’t entirely believe my own half formed opinion on this, in fact I don’t really have one…hence my post.

Women make up 60% of university graduates in Europe but only 20% of grade A researchers (equivalent to full professors). The percentage of women in the higher levels is not increasing at the same speed as the number of women with the age and the qualifications to reach them. Women graduate with excellent qualifications but their presence in top positions is low and practically stagnant.

This is a loss of talent that neither European research nor the economy can afford. We will not have the best research if more than half of European university graduates are not granted a “level playing field”. It is also an unfair situation which challenges European legislation on equal opportunities.

The Communication on the European Research Area and the new European Research Framework Program Horizon 2020 and include gender as a topic for priority action.

In order to promote the structural change of institutions to support a better recognition of talent independent of gender, the EC published in 2011 an expert report entitled Structural Change in research institutions: Enhancing excellence, gender equality and efficiency in research and innovation.

The Structural Change Report is intended to feed into an important policy document, the upcoming EC Recommendation on Gender and Science addressing member states.

http://www.genderste.eu/i_change01.html

Many argue that more women should go to university than men and that the 60 percent women to male ratio is not sexist, boys are on average less behaved at school thus women are more deserving of a university education based on merit. However, when we look at the sex ratios at Oxford, Cambride etc then the reverse is true – men dominate at these universities. This, superficially appears to correlate a little with IQ differences between men and women – whereby men are more likely to have a higher IQ but also show a greater variance in IQ (basically they are more likely to be thick as well).

The variability hypothesis still evokes controversy, but recent data and analyses may bring some closure to the debate […] Data from a number of representative mental test surveys, involving samples drawn from the national population, have become available in the past twenty years in the USA. These have finally provided consistent results. Both Feingold (1992b) and Hedges and Nowell (1995) have reported that, despite average sex differences being small and relatively stable over time, test score variances of males were generally larger than those of females. Feingold found that males were more variable than females on tests of quantitative reasoning, spatial visualisation, spelling, and general knowledge. […] Hedges and Nowell go one step further and demonstrate that, with the exception of performance on tests of reading comprehension, perceptual speed, and associative memory, more males than females were observed among high-scoring individuals.
John Archer and Barbara Lloyd

So, I ask this –

We will not have the best research if more than half of European university graduates are not granted a “level playing field”. It is also an unfair situation which challenges European legislation on equal opportunities.

In what way would they like to see a “level playing field” – would they like to see womens numbers at university cut by 10 percent with a corresponding increase at Oxbridge?

This is all of course, assuming that there is a correlation between IQ and academic achievement and that anyone actually cares about the real reasons as to why we see gender differences in the workplace. I’m open to the sexism line, I’m just not sure I buy some of it without seeing more evidence than what they have presented.

Eg – what about subject area data, I know a hell of a lot of female biology professors – more than men. So could there be an issue of women being overrepresented in to small a number of subject areas? Wheres the data? I wants itttt!

A lot of women give up their careers to have kids.
**** simpletons (not women, the researchers).

Its a very broad statement – 60% of graduates might be women but proportionally they are under represented in the subject areas where most research funding goes.

If you were to look at the percentage of researchers in arts, humanities and social science where things are a bit more balanced (or indeed where the gender balance shifts the other way) then i suspect it would be a different story.

I’m actually quite interested, they do give up to have kids quite often and I would like to see it made as easy as possible for women and men to look after a family whilst being involved with research.

However, if we did this, without introducing any positive discrimination – how much of a difference would we see and how long would the lag time be before we saw the results?

Its a very broad statement – 60% of graduates might be women but proportionally they are under represented in the subject areas where most research funding goes.

Yes, what worries me is that it is a very broad statement with very little actual data analysis behind it and that this group have built a lot of links with universities. I can’t abide sexism – however I also can’t abide lack of evidence, bad data or confirmation bias.

**** it, if a good paper doesn’t exist that includes all the variables that I want then I’m going to find the data and publish a paper myself.

For an example of hilarious statistical fail – probably brought on by bias….cue the guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2012/sep/25/2

Who’s evidence for only 15 percent of female Biology graduates becoming professors is a study that (unless I’m **** blind) lumps all science, engineering and technology graduates together.

http://www.theukrc.org/files/useruploads/files/final_sept_15th_15.42_ukrc_statistics_guide_2010.pdf

One of my exes is a biology researcher, she was the most boring bed mate I’ve had, however the ones studying languages and social sciences were ace. Is this significant to your deliberations, Tom?

It’s (still) a man’s world.

HTH

OP – come back when you’ve read Linda McDowell’s book called Capital Culture.

Edukator – who was funding your research? 😆

OP – come back when you’ve read Linda McDowell’s book called Capital Culture.

Cheers, will have a read! It’s about the city though? I’ve not met any academics who are like the city boys.

I do understand that there is a lot of sexism in the academic world, I’m not quite sure that it’s there to the extent that some make out to be. Especially in Biology, Psychology and the rest of the social sciences.

I’m not saying the conclusion is wrong but the stat work is awful- yes you have an imbalance of female graduates vs researchers but research is only one exit path from uni, so it could be simply that women are less likely to want to go on to postgrad

Also, you need to consider how much that varies from discipline to discipline- we have a fairly even gender split but a larger number of our female students are studying textiles, management, finance, marketing, etc where research is a relatively minor careers path, while the STEM subjects where research and research postgrads are still male dominated.

(we do a lot to try and change that but the fact is, our gender split in the courses is actually “better” than our gender split on applications.)

while the STEM subjects where research and research postgrads are still male dominated.

Perhaps because they choose not to take the subjects during A-levels, my thoroughly ignorant feeling is that women are mostly stopped from becoming professors in these fields at that point. If you have a small pyramid at the bottom to begin with then you get less stones towards the top – this could be confounded by women predominately choosing a few subjects allied to the life sciences.

There’s a difference between “stopped from” and “choose not to” though. I agree with the basic point but there’s a lot of reasons why the gender split goes the way it does and they’re not all obstructions.