Study finds hiring discrimination in STEM academia

[Major Nikon]

What we found shocked us. Women had an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in all fields studied. This preference for women was expressed equally by male and female faculty members, with the single exception of male economists, who were gender neutral in their preferences.

In some conditions, women's advantage reached 4-to-1. When women were compared with men who shared the same lifestyle, advantages accrued to women in all demographic groups—including single or married women without children, married women with preschoolers, and divorced mothers.

...

Our results, coupled with actuarial data on real-world academic hiring showing a female advantage, suggest this is a propitious time for women beginning careers in academic science. The low numbers of women in math-based fields of science do not result from sexist hiring, but rather from women's lower rates of choosing to enter math-based fields in the first place, due to sex differences in preferred careers and perhaps to lack of female role models and mentors.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-in-science/index.html

[Romeo.lima333]

1. but how can that be with the war on women raging

" but rather from women's lower rates of choosing to enter math-based fields in the first place" but doesnt the m in stem stand for math?

[Major Nikon]

2. The OP seems to indicate it's a form of social justice

Our results, coupled with actuarial data on real-world academic hiring showing a female advantage, suggest this is a propitious time for women beginning careers in academic science.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. I think it's more basic

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/sep/01/girls-boys-schools-gender-gap

Girls think they are cleverer, more successful and harder working than boys from as young as four, a study has found.

Boys come round to this view by the age of seven or eight and assume that girls will outperform them at school and behave better in lessons, research from the University of Kent shows.

The study – Gender Expectations and Stereotype Threat – will be presented to the British Educational Research Association's conference tomorrow.

The paper argues that teachers have lower expectations of boys than of girls and this belief fulfils itself throughout primary and secondary school.

Why should that bias stop once people enter college?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

4. This doesn't superise me at all

My girlfriend is has been very aggressively courted by a number of major consumer facing companies. She supervises product development for a technology company, she isn't however interested in being a diversity statistic or token female executive or in any public facing role.

She is extremely good at what she does, if you handed her anything from your cell phone to a television remote she could tell you within fifteen minutes exactly what it cost to manufacture and probably where it was manufactured based on the exact shade of beige or green on the circuit-board. She would probably be the preferred candidate for a lot of product development or production management positions. But many of the companies that have courted her could even articulate precisely what it is they wanted her to do.