To think that scholarships for women shouldn't be open to men?

[HermioneWeasley]

So, scholarship to support women in STEM - a massive issue for all societies that we're not harnessing th talents of half our populations in this area.

But if you "identify as a woman in a way that's meaningful to you" you can apply.

What the ever loving fuck?

Another example of the damage being done to actual women, by saying that "woman" is a feeling in a man's head.

@FelasCloak

I don't believe I misrepresented the article. The link isn't opening now for me.

I don't believe that a representation issue (if it even exists) is due to barriers to entry.

I don't think the scholarships should be tied to anything other than ability. I think it would be fantastic (hypothetically speaking) if the scholarships could be awarded with no information besides academic ability being taken into account. Applicant X vs Applicant Y with nothing identifying: no mention of sex, hair colour, race, nationality etc. Isn't that the kind of world we'd all like: equality of opportunity as opposed to equality of outcome.

user yes that would be ideal but it is impractical in STEM fellowships. People are judged on their academic record and will be recognised from their work even if name and sex isn't given.

With the name and sex given a level playing field doesn't exist due to unconscious bias. So one way to level the playing field is to offer opportunities to the group who are disadvantaged by unconscious bias in order to increase their representation.

fellas in this case I would suggest that under-representation of a given group is actually quite easy to calculate. Whether or not someone belongs to that group is harder (when it is a nebulously defined as trans).

It is painful to women to have to question whether or not somebody is 'trans enough' to have suffered the socialisation from an early age that would disadvantage them. But imagine being someone who has always identified as female (in spite of being XY) and having to worry about someone who identified as male until their sudden conversion 5 mins ahead of the fellowship submission deadline stealing their place?

Beyond, you seem to be in denial, and that is the reason you don't want to pursue an extremely weak point. Approximately 19% of the current convicted female prison population of around 4000 are in prison for violent crimes - that's 760 women. That doesn't of course account for the violent crimes that don't result in prison sentences, or those that have been released. Q.E.D.

What this scholarship does is say there's no such thing as a ladybrain. If nothing else, trans people show that gender is not tied to the biology of the brain.

Well how do you think they're defining "woman" then if it's not biology?

I'm continually stumped as to what trans people do define gender as (it's certainly nothing to do with biology)

What I was trying to say is that XY people who have always from childhood identified as female HAVE experienced the disadvantage this fellowship aims to rectify. They have also on average suffered worse discrimination throughout their lives than the average woman. They are also RARE. Women applying for this fellowship shouldn't feel their inclusion is unfair, or that it is likely to affect them.

BOTH of these groups are at risk from being swamped by XY people who have identified as male through all of their childhood, and much of their adult life and who have not been subject to the discrimination the fellowship aims to address.

Women do have reason to fear losing out to such people, but the trans-since-birth group have even more to fear and lose in this scenario.

TBH it surprises me that the trans community is happy to have 'feels like a woman today' as the line in the sand - because it will do them far more damage than it will do women.

If STEM was equal of opportunity and not sex biased then there would be more women in the field.

Still seeing GF as Gina Ford....

Same thing I guess.

"Transmen are also likely under-represented"

You are so completely missing the point that it's not even funny.

Transmen will of course be "underrepresented" in STEM. What % of population are they? 0.5%?

Women make up 50% of the world's population and yet they are shockingly underrepresented in STEM fields. That is what underrepresentation means. Not wondering why you see so few of a group that are already vanishingly small.

trans men may well be more under-represented than women...just like BME groups are more under-represented than women.

under-represented means wrt their populations levels.

Also if trans is running at 0.5% of the population, why get in a lather about them applying for fellowships? It isn't going to make any difference is it?

"XY people who have always from childhood identified as female HAVE experienced the disadvantage this fellowship aims to rectify. "

This one shouldn't, if it's a scholarship for women - i.e. Females.

That should be the aim of another fellowship set up to encourage and support trans people.

Given the manpower and means at their disposal, as evidenced by the promotion of trans agenda around the world these last few years, they should be able to set one up easily.

All those rabid arseholes on Twitter threatening women with death & rape can perhaps be put to work in such an organization and can make themselves useful.

"trans men may well be more under-represented than women"

Do you know that to be the case or are you just trying to conjure up a "Maybe this, maybe that" sort of argument?

FRETGNIKCUF

If STEM was equal of opportunity and not sex biased then there would be more women in the field.

What do you base that on? A belief that if there is equal opportunity there absolutely must be perfect representation at the end?

A decrease in the number of women in STEM has a strong correlation with 2 factors: an increase in the wealth of a country and higher equality of education in a country.

It's lazy and misleading to suggest that under-representation of women in a certain field must be down to bias and 'bad men' keeping women out. See Scandinavia.

Just to debunk judys misogynist spouting
In the UK in June 2014 (most recent figures I can find):
18,694 men were in prison for violence against the person, compared with 902 women (this category will include murder and man slaughter alongside ABH and GBH)
11,100 men were in prison for sexual offences compared with 92 women.

So yes it is unusual for a woman to commit these crimes. When they happen, they get reported.

"I think it's unfair to have any kind of sex requisite on the application. How about thinking that scholarships shouldn't be closed to any sex?"

So we should not be able to give a scholarship to girls/women? Why the hell not?

Should it also be illegal to help blacks, homeless people, bright but poor students, talented musicians and athletes through scholarships? Or is it just women whose opportunities can be stolen?

"A belief that if there is equal opportunity there absolutely must be perfect representation at the end? "

She didn't say "perfect". She said "more".

Copy and paste of the articles conclusions for you user and also because they are very relevant to this debate. Thanks for posting it because it was a very nuanced and interesting read.

Should we be concerned about women’s underrepresentation in STEM if this result follows from choices made in the absence of coercion or discrimination? I believe sex segregation should be of more than academic interest for at least three reasons. First, “separate but equal” principles often translate into “separate but unequal” outcomes, as is evident in the lower pay in female- than in male-dominated work. Second, sex segregation has feedback effects, reinforcing gender stereotypes and limiting perceived educational, family, and career options for subsequent generations. And third, women may represent an untapped labor pool in STEM fields where global shortages threaten to undermine national competiveness and economic development.

What then might be done to increase women’s presence in STEM fields? One plausible strategy involves changes to the structure of secondary education. Some evidence suggests more girls and women complete degrees in math and science in educational systems where curricular choice is restricted or delayed; all students might take mathematics and science throughout their high-school years or the school might use performance-based tracking and course placement. Although such policies are at odds with Western ideals of individual choice and self-expression, they may weaken penetration of gender stereotypes during the impressionable adolescent years.

Of course, the most obvious means of achieving greater integration of STEM is to avoid reinforcing stereotypes about what girls and boys like and what they are good at. Cultural shifts of this sort occur only gradually, but some change can be seen on the horizon. The rise of “geek chic” may be one sign. Aiming to liberate teen-aged girls from the girls-can’t-do-math and male-math-nerd stereotypes, television star and self-proclaimed math geek Danica McKellar has written three how-to math books, most recently Hot X: Algebra Exposed, presenting math as both feminine and fun. Even Barbie has been updated. In contrast to her math-fearing Teen Talk sister of the early 1990s, the new Computer Engineer Barbie, released in December 2010, comes decked out in a tight t-shirt printed in binary code and equipped with a smart phone and a pink laptop. Of course, one potential pitfall of this math-is-feminine strategy is that it risks swapping one set of stereotypes for another.
So, what gender is science? In short, it depends. When occupations or fields are segregated by sex, most people ­suspect it reflects fields’ inherently masculine or feminine task ­content. But this presumption is belied by substantial cross-national variability in the gender composition of fields, STEM in particular. Moreover, this variability follows surprising patterns. Whereas most people would expect to find many more female engineers in the U.S. and Sweden than in Columbia and Bulgaria, new data suggest that precisely the opposite is true.

Ironically, the freedom of choice that’s so celebrated in affluent Western democracies seems to help construct and give agency to stereotypically gendered “selves.” Self-segregation of careers may occur because some believe they’re naturally good at gender-conforming activities (attempting to build on their strengths), because they believe that certain fields will be seen as appropriate for people like them (“doing” gender), or because they believe they’ll enjoy gender-conforming fields more than gender-nonconforming ones (realizing their “true selves”). It’s just that, by encouraging individual self-expression in postmaterialist societies, we may also effectively promote the development and expression of culturally gendered selves.

I am old enough to remember, as an academic in a science-linked subject, the introduction of anonymous candidate numbers (as opposed to candidates' names being visible on exam scripts and coursework) to counter the problem of markers' bias against women.

It did have an effect. We saw - and see - more firsts awarded to women, for example, under the anonymous system.

But there is still a long way to go, in terms of feeling confident with science from childhood, the effects of maternity, and patronage and the traditions of networking (for starters).

Felascloak, since you have clearly made no effort to try to read or understand my posts, please don't start throwing around terms like "misogynist". At no point did I suggest violence by women was comparable to violence by men. I made a very simply point that to define all trans women by reference to people like Davina Ayrton is as misleading as it would be to define all women by reference to people like Myra Hindley. Which is the opposite of what you claim.

Do refer me to all the reports relating to all the individual women who have been sentenced for violent crime over the last, say, three years.

FelasCloak I xposted with you. Thanks for doing the cut and paste of that article's very interesting conclusions.

I think what a lot of us are trying to get across here is that socialisation of both sexes (which has ultimately led to a grossly low number of female STEM workers) is heavily based on sex and NOT gender, so 'identifying as a woman' (which IS down to gender unless you're born a woman) doesn't rectify the problem.

I'm going to suspend my belief system for a moment and pretend gender isn't a bullshit concept.
My gender is individual to me, and very personal to me. Only I can know it, only I have access to those feelings. Same as every other person on the planet. The very concept of gender relies heavily on self-identification. How I see me. However, until one decide to wear their gender on their sleeve so to speak, how others see them, is heavily influenced by their sex.

The vast majority of people who identify as gender 'that doesn't conform to their biological sex' - trans, non-binary etc - do not recgonise this until, at the earliest, adolescence. Some de-transition (or accept they are a butch female or effeminate male), some don't.

When they do start to wear their gender on their sleeve, they will most likely experience a different kind of socialisation. However, as someone pointed out before, people treat others based on their sex from the very early days, even holding newborns differently according to sex. Any parent will tell you that, come toddlerhood, socialisation based on sex is well ingrained (especially now in the world of pinkification). The presents you're bought, the way you're expected to behave, the clothes available to buy, what is marketed at you. Even if a person identifies as a different gender to that of their sex from adolscence (teenage years), very little can be done to undo the decade and a half long socialisation. It's not like one day someone says "I am now a woman", people forget that you were ever a male, and retrospectively adjust their attitude and behaviour towards you.

Even when someone does announce their gender, eg as a transwoman, they will not be socialised from there on in as a woman. They will be socialised as a transwoman.

I hate to waffle but my point is that this scholarship SHOULD be given on the basis of sex, because that's precisely why women have been held back for so long. Whilst gender will prompt a new form of socialisation, it won't even begin to scratch the surface of borne socialisation from sex. If gender was not a concept, and trans did not exist, you would still have the same inequalities from male and female in STEM field. In brief, gender has bugger all to do with it, and a scholarship for women should not take gender into account

So we should not be able to give a scholarship to girls/women? Why the hell not?

No CoteD'zure. I'm saying they shouldn't receive a scholarship because they're a woman although I'm fairly sure you knew that laready.

Inequality is inequality however it's packaged. Should my white (perhaps straight but they're only 6) male child not be eligible for a scholarship because of his willy?

As PinkyOfPie so nearly said a scholarship for women should not take gender into account

User you misunderstand my meaning of gender. I do NOT mean sex when I say 'gender'

Also

Should my white (perhaps straight but they're only 6) male child not be eligible for a scholarship because of his willy?

It's highly likely that he'd have no trouble walking into STEM field if that's what he wants, however my 3yo daughter would find it more challenging due to her vagina (or hopefully not by then).

I think the issue you have with this scholarship is little to do with trans and more about perceived inequality, and is another thread entirely.

On that basis would you also object to disabled people getting a scholarship in fields they're under represented in?

pinky the problem I have with your most recent post is that the number one thing holding women back in STEM is that they don't apply.

They don't apply because they lack the confidence of their male colleagues. This is down to their internal assignment of gender and their life learning because of it.

Unconscious bias against yourself is the most problematic.

I have been in a room with 50 talented female scientists all of whom said 'no I wouldn't apply for that job...I don't think I am ready', when in reality at least half of them were.

The main reason for needing a fellowship for 'women' is because they don't apply in high enough numbers for all the other fellowships. It is their gender identity that holds them back (and societies bias of what that gender is good at) not their biological sex.

That's why I think people who are XY but have always thought of themselves as female should be included. They may well have the same biases that they aren't as good at STEM that many XX women do.

darn you pinky...you did another post...the last but one is the one I was referring too.

On that basis would you also object to disabled people getting a scholarship in fields they're under represented in?

That depends upon their ability. They shouldn't get a scholarship because they're disabled.

It's highly likely that he'd have no trouble walking into STEM field if that's what he wants, however my 3yo daughter would find it more challenging due to her vagina (or hopefully not by then).

No idea what that's based on, but okay...

I think the issue you have with this scholarship is little to do with trans

Yes. I guess you're right. It seems a shame that the OP set the 'whats yours is mine and what's mine is mine too' tone.