For John, BLUF: Every news story needs to be questioned. Nothing to see here; just move along.
My Middle Brother, Lance, send along this NPR story about women in the engineering career fields. The story tells us that 38% of women who enter the engineering fields drop out, and the story puts the blame on the culture, which is described, at one point, as being afflicted by, amongst other things, "white mid-western male syndrome". I can remember when white mid-western males were considered the salt of the earth and the group that made this nation great.♠ Oh well, sic transit gloria.
One thing struck me about the story. There is no basis for comparison. The 38% is deemed too high and that is it. No discussion of the male washout rate.
There is discussion of culture and the glass ceiling, long hours and career focused expect ions. None about how engineering is a challenging area, with great achievements and sometimes great failures. No discussion of if the SR-71, or the trip to the Moon or the invention of the light bulb could have happened, or have happened as soon, in a different environment.
Where is Paul Harvey when you need him, to give us "the rest of the story".
Regards — Cliff
♠ Frankly, I think the use of "white male" marks the speaker or writer as someone who is trying to work out their hostility toward Caucasian males. It is petty, but it is also likely hypocritical. We are soon to be the new minority. Give us the respect demanded for all other minorities.
Lance noted:
ReplyDeleteJefferson Missouri is pretty smack in the middle of the mid west.
Lance's Brother John said
ReplyDelete"the rest of the story".
The reason the author doesn’t want to provide the other statistic is because the overall rate ranges, depending on your source, from 50 to 58 percent. If 38 percent of women drop out, that must mean that men are dropping in droves to pull the rate up above 50 percent.
CRK NOTE: I wouldn't say "droves" regarding the percentage, which is 12% to 20%, but those are significant. But, in overall numbers people lost, yes, "droves".
Which says that, like in many things regarding gender, we have looked at the surface, but avoided the deep dive needed to find the underlying pathologies, if there are, in fact, pathologies.