guest56436
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Posts posted by guest56436
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45 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:
Didn't you just say this a couple of hours ago?
This is exactly what I said:
4 hours ago, Comparativist said:However, some environments or systems may favor personality traits - such as disagreeableness - that are more predominant in male populations, hence benefit them. However, that doesn't necessarily mean there is discrimination. In fact, it could just be a pareto-optimal situation that favors a certain kind of person which is causing a certain gender imbalance. There's a significant difference.
Please explain to me how that is, in any way, 'denying that there is gender discrimination' or 'denying our experiences?' At the very least try to be a little intellectually honest here.
48 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:You chose to ignore the arguments people used to rebut your claims, as you're choosing to ignore my point, which I made very clear.
No one has rebut any of my claims directly. I don't know why you keep saying this. It's pretty clear that you continue to actively skirt around my arguments.
49 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:If you need further proof that there is a gender bias agains women in academia, you can just google "gender bias in academia". One of the first results is this article that lists a bunch of academic papers throughout. The information is there, just as listed here.
I've read these already. Yes, there are studies that have findings that suggest there may be discrimination. But there are also studies that show that there isn't (I've provided one such study, in this very thread). Furthermore, we also have no idea why these findings are actually occurring besides very vague claims of 'gender bias.' We also have no idea how prevalent it is.
Of course there exists discrimination in academia. There is discrimination present in a number of facets of society, both for and against women/men/race/ect. I never said otherwise, and to claim that I did is at best a strawman, at worst, a complete lie.
56 minutes ago, rheya19 said:Emotional appeal is not fallacious. It's human. I could appeal to someone to not yell at someone else because they're hurting that person's feelings, or to support war refugees on the basis of empathy for the refugees' emotional trauma, and those would not be fallacious arguments. Emotion is not necessarily false. It is simply another way of interpreting the world and other people. And the inability to accept others' emotions as reason to treat them with dignity (ie believing they are being discriminated against and are unhappy about it despite not providing you a data set and chart) is neither mature nor healthy.
No, it's a fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
Of course it's human. Does not mean it is logical and has any merit in an intellectual discussion.
54 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:And the way you keep saying I'm making an emotional claim just furthers my point that you can't comprehend a plight that goes beyond your direct line of view. I'm making a inference from the comments you made that I've read on this thread and elsewhere that you're not emotionally intelligent.
Great. I don't care.
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54 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:
You're denying that there is gender discrimination that favors men in academia. Aren't you?
Please point to where I said anything of the sort?
I mean, for christ sakes, I even said this on the first page of the thread:
On 4/5/2018 at 5:38 PM, Comparativist said:I'm not interested in denying the presence of discrimination --- and by the way, discrimination cuts both ways.
57 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:I'm not ignoring what you said, but other people have already responded to that when you first raised those arguments, so I figured if you didn't get it the first time, there would be no point in repeating it.
No one has responded to any of my arguments in a substantive way in this entire thread.
58 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:I'm not making an emotional argument, I'm pointing out that you don't have emotional intelligence to understand an issue that does not affect you.
You are appealing to emotion. It's a fallacious argument that people resort to when they don't have any factual arguments to bring to the table.
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48 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:
Start with these.
You're clearly refusing to listen to what most women in academia (your field included) are saying. You are being part of the problem by denying the problem exists. I'm sorry you can't muster enough empathy to put yourself in other people's shoes, but you're just contributing to a hostile environment for your female colleagues.
I have already read those. If you notice, I replied to that very post in the thread.
I'm so confused, denying what problem exists? What have I denied exactly?
And it's convenient that you have now just ignored everything that I wrote and started with appeals to emotion arguments.
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15 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:
There's no such thing as "male" and "female" professions.
I never said there was such. There are male dominated professions and woman dominated professions however.
16 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:Women are pushed to professions such as nursing and teaching because as infants we are conditioned to be "motherly and caring", while men are conditioned to be aggressive and build stuff. Men are not gifted with special math brains, they just grow up being more exposed to logic-based games and such. Also, competition over cooperation in science (and in most places) is bad for everyone.
This is simply not true. Please link to the scientific evidence behind this.
Environmental factors may account for a portion of the variance in profession choice, but not even close to all. We know that baby infant males and females have demonstrably different preferences and behavior traits prior to environmental factors, so your theory is false.
Science also shows us that male and female brains are quite different from each other. Differing levels of testosterone in the womb leads to divergent brain chemistry and development in males and females before birth.
Lastly, competition and cooperation are not zero-sum. Environments need to have both - and the levels of each is debatable - to achieve optimal outcomes. More cooperation does not necessarily mean more success.
16 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:Work environments are dynamic, but they change according to the views of whomever is in charge. The system has evolved organically to favor men because men have always been in charge of these fields.
They do not necessarily change to whomever is in charge, where's the evidence for that? Institutional behavior can persist long after the removal or turnover of leaders or members.
16 minutes ago, TheWalkingGrad said:Regarding your comment about men not being regarded with more respect, it is not true. Various studies have shown (some were posted here if I'm not mistaken) that men get more credibility than equally qualified women. You may not notice because you are a man and are blind to the microaggressions women in academia suffer in their everyday lives, but please stop denying our experiences, you're part of the problem.
I also linked a study that was done where it showed that woman were given preference in job applications based on their name being on the CV. When names were removed entirely form the CVs, men were favored. I also linked to a comprehensive and methodologically deep study that showed that women were favored in STEM job hiring by approximately 33%. That was completely ignored of course, but whatever.
I am not part of the problem for 'denying your experiences' whatever that means. You are part of the problem for spreading false, and in many cases completely ideological (not factual), information.
- AB121212, hats, SomeoneThrewMyShoe and 4 others
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8 hours ago, TakeruK said:
I see a huge juxtaposition of ideas here. You say that the system isn't perfect and has traditionally favoured men. This is discrimination against women. (The system doesn't only favour men, as you point out). Telling people to adapt to the system nicely glosses over the real issue (in my opinion), which is why is it that men like me get to benefit from a system that favours me? I don't want to be part of a system where I automatically get more respect and recognition because I present as male and have a male name. So I think I should work to change it, not demand that everyone change to the system that conveniently already favours me. In addition, how do we even know that the current system is actually the best one? If we were truly scholars/innovators and we desire to see a better world, we would not be afraid to lose our male privilege in order to create a better system.
Well, would you support making the nursing and teaching fields more competitive and less cooperative in order to entice more men to join these professions?
Work environments are not static entities. They adapt through time, largely through innovation. The current system may not be the best but it's certainly changed organically countless times based on what works and what doesn't.
No one automatically gets more respect and recognition because they present as male or have a male name. That just simply does not, or very very rarely, exists. However, some environments or systems may favor personality traits - such as disagreeableness - that are more predominant in male populations, hence benefit them. However, that doesn't necessarily mean there is discrimination. In fact, it could just be a pareto-optimal situation that favors a certain kind of person which is causing a certain gender imbalance. There's a significant difference.
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4 hours ago, TakeruK said:
In my field, you should chat with your POI/potential advisor to see if they would be able to fund you if you start early.
Not very common in political science, we don't usually get funded through professors' external grants.
Although I agree it doesn't hurt to ask people in your department if anyone is looking for a RA.
I think the most straightforward answer is probably to get a temporary summer job (could be anything).
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^ Yes, and...
What's the price-to-rent ratio of your area?
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5 hours ago, lemma said:
(And yeah, it really hurts to be on the other end of this when you've worked so hard. It can feel degrading. I have an honors ivy quant degree, a perfect GRE, a first-author paper submitted to Science, olympiad background, years of research and industry experience... but apparently that's not enough and all the smart men don't get into programs because of the dumb women like me taking their place.)
To be fair, you do sound a bit insufferable.
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I feel like you're doing it backwards.
Apply to 8-14 programs where you have multiple people you could work with, have good placement, and are preferably highly ranked.
Dont worry about the questions you asked in the OP until or IF you get acceptances.
Also, even if you study political psychology you don't have to go to programs that are traditionally really focused on that. Just apply to the best programs possible that are decent fits, including places like Minnesota and Michigan.
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MA programs in political science in the US are rare and usually not very good. I'm sure there's some decent programs out there though.
I think there's a few strategies if you're aiming to get into a doctoral program:
1) If you study comparative, an area studies MA.
2) If you are interested in policy, a public policy MA.
3) The more general interdisciplinary programs like MAPSS.
4) Quantitative focused masters, like stats or Econ.
5) Do an MA in Canada or the UK.
They all have tradeoffs, and strengths and weaknesses.
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11 minutes ago, fuzzylogician said:
Two minutes on google, and this is all I'm going to contribute to this debate at this point. I've been active for about four years now in a study that has collected actual measures from my field, and I can talk about actual real trends and numbers. Everyone else here seems to be talking about their own personal experience and little else, and having done this for several years now, I've learned that engaging in that debate is a waste of time. Find a female colleague near you and have a one-on-one conversation -- meaning as her about her experiences and really listen to the answer. You might learn something.
http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/01/25/463846130/why-women-professors-get-lower-ratings
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2015/04/08/1418878112.DCSupplemental/pnas.1418878112.sapp.pdf
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6 minutes ago, samman1994 said:
You only cited 1 example source (hence n=1) for your assumptions/post. Sure exaggeration, premise is still wrong. Conjecture is conjecture. Unless you have done a study blind (or can find evidence thereof) of 2 applications that are completely similar in every conceivable way except for the gender of the applicant (which by the way, don't know how you can tell just by a name), and the female applicant does get in but the male doesn't, and then can prove that this was from a gender bias. Then and only then, can you make the statement you are making as fact. As for now, it is a conjecture. One that from all the responses, is an incorrect one.
Here's one, of public sector applications:
Of course, this doesn't tell us much except that designing programs/policies to be outcome dependent on something you don't know why is occurring is a bad idea.
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Fuzzylogician, there have been plenty of papers showing the opposite (as I am sure you know). So let's not tout your results (which we have no way of verifying either), as infallible.
I'm not interested in denying the presence of discrimination --- and by the way, discrimination cuts both ways. I've always found the whole STEM thing curious though. There's so much focus on STEM. Yet, most people don't care about women dominating certain fields like education or nursing. And no one at all cares that men dominate the trades. It seems like when there's underrepresentation at the high end of the desirability scale (i.e. CEOs, stem fields, ect.) there is a significant outcry of discrimination; yet, for lower rungs of the job market, no one cares.
I'm in the camp that doesn't believe there needs to be equal representation across all fields. There's plenty of research that points to significant differences in preferences and interests (and behavior) between males and females, we shouldn't expect these differences not to manifest into larger trends of occupation choice. I'm interested in reducing barriers that prevalent interested people in pursuing choice; but many 'remedies' are put forth to rectify something that might not be discrimination in the first place.
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And I would just like to add, the underrepresentation (in the number of accepted/admitted/attending) of certain subsets of students does not necessarily equate to gender bias or discrimination. It's a fallacy to suggest that we should see the exact same (or very similar) demographic distribution of graduate students as the general population for all academic programs or disciplines.
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Go to the program where you can get into Ph.D. level seminars. I've heard that's not the case at NYU, but I don't know for sure. You may also want to use this opportunity to 'tech up' as much as possible; NYU might be better for this (all depends on the program structure really).
You should try and take at the bare minimum a graduate/Ph.D. level stats sequence. Or maybe formal modelling instead.
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41 minutes ago, justwonderin said:
To clarify, I am talking about discrimination for admissions -- and maybe this doesn't happen in all STEM fields, but it certainly does in math. Take a male candidate's application, change nothing but the gender, and they would have a whole new tier of schools accessible to them.
Again, I don't think anyone who is familiar with this would contend that math grad schools don't have this (fully intentional) bias. My question is more whether or not it is justified.
Again, why don't you provide some evidence to support your claim?
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I don't see any empirical evidence to support your claim, to be honest.
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Do your own work
- not@prof_yet and Ayerbender
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1 hour ago, telkanuru said:
Two members of my committee would only give me my lists with 3 months to go. They were on sabbatical and wouldn't start before they got back. If I had the option to take 6 months, I absolutely would have. Some programs do want you to ignore everything and study for comps. Again, you should understand your own experiences are not universal.
So your objection to my statement is to bring up a totally obscure example of 2/3s of your committee were on sabbatical + being dicks about your comps? I can tell why you're not in a nomothetic-driven field (I'm kidding, btw).
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1 hour ago, telkanuru said:
If you can pass comps without a ~3 month period where you're focused on studying (I had to give up cycling and gained 25 lbs), your committee let you off easy, to say the least. It sounds to me like comps are more a formality in your program than they were in mine; you should be careful about universalizing your experience.
And sure, we can all question the utility of comps, but in the end, you need to do what your committee expects. Otherwise, you don't pass, and then your publications (or whatever) don't matter.
I never said not to study. I said to do what is necessary to pass and don't ignore everything else to study for your comps.
There's no reason whatsoever that you can't devote 4 hours to research and 6 to studying for your comps everyday and get what you need to get done.
And if you are leaving the entirety of your comp studying to one short period then perhaps you should question your planning. There's no reason why you can't stretch studying for comps over a 6 month+ period.
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25 minutes ago, hats said:
@Comparativist This is one of those things that varies not only between institutions and departments, but within departments, but there can sometimes be a major difference between 'comps,' which seems to be what you're experienced with, and 'prelims,' which the OP mentions. Although the words are often used interchangeably, my prototype of 'comps' is a set reading list that all the students in a program (or subset of a program) have to get through to pass to candidacy. I can see how this would seem antiquated, and worth doing the minimum possible. My prototype of 'prelims' are written exams based on a reading list the student has designed. It's possible to design prelims that are over-broad and end up being a waste of time. On the other hand, it is also possible to design prelims that, although they don't directly lead to publications, set you up with a strong foundation to publish quickly and well once you've reached candidacy. In the latter case, they still shouldn't be a "to-the-exclusion-of-all-else" priority, but to throw out an unscientific estimate, might be worth doing 15% more than the minimum possible. I don't really know what the OP is talking about, but it's possible people have been talking about different kinds of exams.
It's not really that important to the discussion here, but I'd like to note that publishing from 'day one' is both field and background-specific. Although I don't know the layouts of other disciplines very well, over on the GRFP thread I see a lot of people even in the hard sciences saying things like, "my field doesn't expect students to publish until their third year!" But to take my field as an example, a lot of anthropology PhDs do not have access to enough evidence to write a publishable article until they are in their fourth or fifth year. The most likely effect of a medium-quality publication from your first two years is either 1) mild to moderate positive effect (for people with master's degrees and 5+ years of previous experience in the community they study) or 2) to distract you from your preparations for those ABD years, making it more, rather than less, difficult for you to achieve the necessary pace to get a job later (for the other students). This obviously benefits the people with decade(s) of previous experience, but the most important part of their publication record is the period that follows their dissertation research period (years 3-4), just like it is for the less experienced PhD students. I don't know whether OP is in a field more like yours or more like mine, but your experience with publication timelines is not universal.
I disagree. The phrase "you should be focused on publications and research from day one" is perhaps the most universal statement (outside of totally irrelevant or trite things) one can make with regards to grad school.
1) I don't see a large difference between comps or preliminaries. Either way, the advice still stands: do what you need to do to pass and not much more. Sure, preliminaries may take more time and resources (given that you have to produce your own reading list), but that doesn't really change the parameters of what I said. What you are differentiating is how to approach preliminaries, not of their overall usefulness in the grand scheme of things (and, once again, their utility is very marginal compared to your research).
2) You are kind of strawmanning here. I never said you need to be pumping out publications from day 1. I said you need to be working towards those goals. That means developing working papers, running experiments, collecting data, ect ect.
3) "My field doesn't expect students to publish until their third year." These kind of statements are complete hogwash. Expectations are meant to be broken. There are countless PhD students who break expectations, and surprise, they are the ones that get the offers when they hit the market. Once again, I didn't say you need to publish from day one; but that doesn't preclude you from working towards those goals. Whether that is developing a solo working paper, or getting involved in a collaborative project (in some capacity) from the get go is irrelevant.
4) "A lot of anthropology students don't have enough evidence to write a publishable article until fourth or fifth year." Well, get that evidence. Get grants/spend your own stipend savings and get out and do fieldwork your first two summers.
5) A medium-quality publication is a medium-quality publication, which is better than no publication. I disagree that it's a mild to moderate positive effect. Publications are not a finite resource -> one publication doesn't reduce your ability to publish other high quality work.
6) I don't agree with the tradeoffs argument. You have a research agenda. You then take a pick axe to it and break it down into smaller projects that you go out and do from day 1. You are always working towards a bigger agenda/project (your dissertation). Granted, people could get involved in a lot of really disparate projects that overburden them and bog them down, but that's not a necessary corollary to what I proposed.
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10 hours ago, TMP said:
Frankly, I am surprised that your adviser asked you to undertake an article for publication when you should be focused on studying (my adviser severely restricted what I could do during my third year, including grant applications and research). If you advise graduate students in the future, you have this experience to draw from as to how to advise at this stage of graduate students' career.
I just don't agree with this.
Publications and research - and in extension, grant applications - are infinitely more important than your comps. You should be focused on publications and research from day one, those are what are going to get you employed when you're done. There is no period where you should be 'focused on studying.' Comps are a antiquated, but still useful, hoop for students to pass through. But that's it: to pass through. You do what is necessary to pass the comp and hopefully not much more than that. You should be able to juggle research, teaching requirements, studying, anything else, at once; because it is not going to get easier later on, especially if/when you are on the TT.
There's nothing really you can do now about it, but at the end of the day you passed your comps. No one outside will see that letter. It may marginally make your LORs when you apply to jobs indirectly weaker (i.e., they sure as hell won't mention it, but they may perceive you now as weaker than they did before). But there's nothing you can do about it. Just produce the best research you can, write a good dissertation, and try to publish because that's what is going to get you a job anyway.
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Go to UBC. The MA is program is better. But try to get the RAship, it will be better for your applications (and considering you already know the faculty well, this should be a relatively easy thing to accomplish).
Gender Discrimination
in The Lobby
Posted · Edited by Comparativist
Feminist logic:
X is claimed to be discrimination. When someone questions whether that may be the case (not matter how logical or fact driven their evidence is), that person is invalidating individuals' experiences and is therefore wrong.
Wow, that's some sound logic you've got there. Seems a little ideological no? I'm done here.