Technology

59080 readers

4141 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

402

Women STEM students up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism (www.hepi.ac.uk)

submitted 9 months ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

155 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago (4 children)

As a woman engineer, yeah we’re probably disproportionately responsible. I’m sure science and math have more sexism than say art, but biology has to treat women better than engineering I assume.

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm a guy so I realize I don't see or understand everything from women's perspective, but I'm genuinely surprised by this. I've worked for decades at companies with mostly engineers and mostly men, and my experience is that engineers have on average much more progressive views than, say, my neighbors. My current company recently switched from a male to a female CEO and I haven't even heard anyone mention her gender, much less express any negative views in connection to her gender. My previous employer also had a female CEO and it just wasn't a thing on people's mind. At my current employer we have anonymous surveys to find problems in the workplace, and there were exactly zero people who reported observing any sexist actions.

I've heard sexist remarks twice in 20 years, and both times I was so flabbergasted that I didn't know what to do or say before the conversation had already moved on. So if I'm bad at speaking up when it happens, it's only because I didn't get enough practice.

[–] silverhand@reddthat.com 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Where I come from, the engineering fields are dominated by men but medical fields have a female majority. I wonder what's the difference with medicine

[–] Urist@lemmy.ml 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Medicine is more aligned with the cultural idea of "what a woman should be/do". Taking care of others, showing compassion and so on is regarded as more "feminine qualities" than "masculine". Note this is not something I agree with, but I think it probably is part of the picture.

[–] GiveMemes@jlai.lu 6 points 9 months ago

I'd recommend Acollierastro's YouTube video about the rampant sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault in physics and astronomy. While engineering is certainly a big part of the equation, every hard science except biology is dominated by men and that definitely feeds all of these issues

[–] scrimbingus@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Anecdotally, the biological engineering department at my university has a much higher fraction of women than the rest of the college of engineering, while mechanical/aerospace has the lowest, so it varies even within engineering.