Is It Insulting to Girls That There Are Fewer Women in Physics?

[Intrastellar]

Not necessarily. Different conditions may introduce noise that distorts (supposedly) inherent/intrinsic traits.

How large can we expect the distortion in the ratio to be to still be able to say that the intrinsic traits are the main factor in deciding the ratio ?
If the actual distortion is large enough, doesn't this imply that indeed the main factors in deciding the ratio are external conditions ? Doesn't it become reasonable to expect that these conditions should apply equally for males and females? And to think there is a problem when they don't ? That they don't can be seen through the actual ratio, 20% in this case.

 

[russ_watters]

Actually that is an interesting point. I recall a comment by a women physicist comparing the supply of physicist to a bushel of apples. We have been picking physicists for most of time from the male bushel. To fill positions we must dig deeper. Women offer a fresh and full basket from which we are drawing fewer but top notch physicist may it be possible that digging less deeply into the women's basket is better than continuing to dig deeper into the mans basket? Of coarse assuming that they are equally skilled of which there seems to be ample data.

According to the stats V50 posted, the proportion stays fairly consistent from college through academia, implying a mixed basket with 20% women in it that gets picked fairly uniformly (with the exception of the last, though there may be other reasons for that).

Roughly 1/3 of college graduates never use their degree, but half of physicists:
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/...degree-many-college-grads-never-work-/273665/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/jzy/career_prospects_for_physics_majors/

Or, by another measure, about 25% of physical sciences grads are currently working in STEM, vs, for example, 50% for engineers. And I'm going to guess that's worse for physics than biology or chemistry, though these stats don't separate them:
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-130.html

To me, focusing on under-representation of favored minorities in demographically overrepresented fields is bassackwards. So my question, slightly more focused, is: Why are too many men studying physics? Follow-up: why are too many women studying psychology (about 3x as many women as men - note, I did not say "not enough men")?
http://www.collegeatlas.org/top-degrees-by-gender.html

If there is a woman-specific problem, it isn't that women aren't doing STEM (50% of STEM grads are women), it's that women, more than men, are picking fields that don't pan-out. More women than men in biology, but also many, many more women than men in psychology.
https://ngcproject.org/statistics

 

[WWGD]

How large can we expect the distortion in the ratio to be to still be able to say that the intrinsic traits are the main factor in deciding the ratio ?
If the actual distortion is large enough, doesn't this imply that indeed the main factors in deciding the ratio are external conditions ? Doesn't it become reasonable to expect that these conditions should apply equally for males and females? And to think there is a problem when they don't ? That they don't can be seen through the actual ratio, 20% in this case.

No, by distortion I meant a large variation/variance from the ratio, not deviation from a 50% ratio. I don't see any reason to believe the ratio should equal 50%.

 

[Intrastellar]

No, by distortion I meant a large variation/variance from the ratio, not deviation from a 50% ratio. I don't see any reason to believe the ratio should equal 50%.

I should have used variance instead of distortion, sorry. I mean by "distortion in the ratio" the variance in the ratio between different countries. I, too, didn't mean deviation from 50% ratio.

 

[Vanadium 50]

(with the exception of the last, though there may be other reasons for that

The authors say this is not statistically significant.