Dr. Cat Hickswhat
oh one of these citations of "evidence of gender differences" is not to a study that SHOWS gender differences, but to a study that SAYS we could THINK about gender differences. La Croix-flavor gender differences
Ashley: "is this really what you want to be doing right now? I mean maybe it is"
screaming. shut computer science down until we identify the source of the problem
Coming into reading this stuff after years of seeing the absolutely wasteland that is decades of work to gradually undo the horrific gender-diffs-based arguments about ability in the social sciences, it's like landing your spaceship on an alien planet after you escape a nuclear dystopia and the aliens have a Manhattan project going and they're really pleased about it
I'm going to tear this motherfucking piece of shit stuff to shreds once I have slept a little more.
serríaðIf I have to see this goddamn "spatial ability" argument one more time. Get more specific. What type of spatial ability you absolute clowns. Exactly what task, and explain how you address the spatial ability conflation with gender problems. Explain why and how these diffs vanish when you include all the spatial tasks THAT RESEARCHERS REMOVED BECAUSE GIRLS WERE GOOD AT THEM
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-023-09728-2
Gender Differences in Spatial Ability: a Critical Review - Educational Psychology Review
Spatial ability has long been regarded as important in STEM, and mental rotation, a subcategory of spatial ability, is widely accepted as the cognitive ability with the largest gender difference in favor of men. Multiple meta-analyses of various tests of spatial ability have found large gender differences in outcomes of the mental rotation test (MRT). In this paper, we argue that more recent literature suggests that the MRT is not a valid measure of mental rotation ability. More importantly, we argue that the construct of “spatial ability” itself has been co-constructed with gender, and thus has not been devised in a neutral way, but in a manner that is influenced by gender beliefs. We discuss that though spatial thinking is also required in feminized fields, past research has cast spatial ability as only necessary in masculinized STEM fields. Due to a prevailing belief that spatial ability was an inherently male ability, researchers “selectively bred” some spatial assessment instruments to maximize gender differences, rather than to precisely measure a spatial construct. We argue that such instruments, of which the MRT is one, cannot validly assess between-group differences, and ideas about biological or evolutionary causes of sex differences in spatial ability lack empirical evidence. Instead, the co-construction of gender and spatial ability better explains observed patterns. We also provide recommendations for spatial researchers moving forward.
myth-making!!!!! You can't cite one flimsy poor study for an enormous ability and achievement prediction claim!!
Something I want to get across at some point, in some way, is that we can have more scientific approaches than constructing an "average" that doesn't really exist, and often isn't truly isn't useful for highly variable, idiographic, and complex outcomes in the world
Like we can dispute whether there ARE meaningful group differences that emerge in the average over time (itself highly disputable for many stereotypes), but we can ALSO think about how this entire APPROACH might not be meaningful for our question(s)
Graydon@grimalkina Computer science concerns things people built, not nature. (Abstract math might be computer science for some values of all four nouns, but a compiler or a computer language are made things.)
If the tool chain was built to be congenial to a particular habit of thought, that's not gendered, that's style. (Some people get really mad when you call it style.)
E.g., declarative programming is something many self-identified skilled programmers loathe and are bad at. It remains effective.
cognitively accessible math@grimalkina YES. While it may be true that there are average differences... why does that even matter? Oh, and did they even really get good samples?
But how does it matter? What are ye doin' with that premise? I fit the stereotype and struggle w/ 3D perceptions, depth, space... and if that meant we spent a little extra time letting me figure that otu, I"m all for it. Far more likely it would turn into "oh, don't do this thing. Look at how it's not coming naturally YOu're a girl."
Except it might "come naturally" in a different context, cultural or educational.
But how does it matter? What are ye doin' with that premise? I fit the stereotype and struggle w/ 3D perceptions, depth, space... and if that meant we spent a little extra time letting me figure that otu, I"m all for it. Far more likely it would turn into "oh, don't do this thing. Look at how it's not coming naturally YOu're a girl."
Except it might "come naturally" in a different context, cultural or educational.
Marek McGann@grimalkina Okay, self-promotion makes my skin crawl, but as it happens myself and a friend have a book coming in Sept trying to re-up the debate on this. Trying to find some way to put it that it won't be ignored for another 70 years...
Deborah Apthorp@MarekMcGann @grimalkina oooh interesting!
@MarekMcGann I look forward to it!!
Adam Steer...maybe related, from a talk about sea ice a couple years ago... the orangey yellow zone is *literally everything interesting*, and it is all "inlier data" that we were trying to work on. The trend line and tiny zone around it is where to get papers and stay hired.
...I like to think this really tells us where to focus energy to understand a thing. If we are prepared to read it.
I do get career regret about leaving psych behind. I wanted to do both (humans+Earth)!
yelling jackal@grimalkina so many knives
So many knives
This is the kind of thing that I stamp out HARD when people start up about it because it's rubbish and useless and serves no purpose whatsoever, except for exclusion
So many knives
This is the kind of thing that I stamp out HARD when people start up about it because it's rubbish and useless and serves no purpose whatsoever, except for exclusion
nadja@grimalkina this certainly reads like "we have decided girls are worse at computering than men and we will make damn sure we find the data that supports our claim!"
Nefarious Celt@dequbed @grimalkina can I mansplain here.
And point out the women that “I” know about who created the industry. From initial theory to chip design.
Eowyn@grimalkina *gender essentialism intensifies*
Phil@grimalkina Well this whole thread has been a fun ride. I particularly love the "we studied the two binary genders" part (unless I missed something). Not really a lot of diversity considered across the board here.
Sandor Spruit 🇪🇺🇳🇱🇺🇦🇨🇦@grimalkina Next thing you know, they’ll have the women only serve the coffee or something. Read this for a better weekend experience: female PhD at one of our technical unis wrote an “anti-acknowledgments” page *in her thesis* (!) addressing folks she explicitly did not want to thank. She is not taking any prisoners, did not back down when threatened with legal action by the board.
Page is mainly in Dutch but scroll down for the juicy bits in English:
https://delta.tudelft.nl/article/ik-zeg-nee-bedankt-tegen-degene-die-me-aanzag-voor-de-koffiedame
@sandorspruit WOW omg. Good for her
@grimalkina Let’s say they made the national news, paper headlines. But not in the way folks might like…
@grimalkina A survey published recently suggests around 30% of people working at said university consider leaving. Social security reasons 😳
@sandorspruit @grimalkina the part about losing interest in science because of sexism hits hard (too close to home).
@eowyn @grimalkina Sorry to hear that 🙏
stephaniepixie 🏳️🌈@sandorspruit @grimalkina Dr Rachel Los said what so many women have thought but didn’t say out loud. I admire her so much and also feel heartbreak for her.
@stephaniepixie @grimalkina Let’s just say the message was shared across Dutch universities. There’s a whole range of social safety, open science and other reforms efforts underway so this fits right in. My own uni, for example, has officially dropped the faculty vs staff distinction.
PalmAndNeedle
Carolyn@grimalkina I remember a story years back in which a physics teacher addressed his female students lagging in spatial awareness by having classes in which they tossed balls & other things that the boys had had more experience with. In no time, the girls had caught up.
@grimalkina I also remember a guy introducing me to 3d Tetris, saying it was ok if I found it difficult because girls weren’t good at the spatial awareness thing, then his jaw dropped as I blew his score away. 😁
It’s really time for these myths to end.
@grimalkina if you know anything about fiberarts such as knitting, crochet, weaving and sewing, you know you need a good spatial visualization ability.
These crafts are usually done by women in our culture.
These crafts are usually done by women in our culture.
@eowyn oh amen
@grimalkina it would be interesting to include fiber craft related spatial visualization exercises as a way to control weither the low performance is due to it being presented as a math problem.
Similarly to the study where they gave the same exercise by presenting it as either a geometry exercise or a drawing exercise.
Similarly to the study where they gave the same exercise by presenting it as either a geometry exercise or a drawing exercise.
@grimalkina might also be interesting to see if men/boys underperform when the exercise is associated with a "feminine " activity like fiber craft.
@grimalkina also you need spatial rotation ability to understand stereoisometrism which is important in biology (the more feminized stem field).
David Weir 
@grimalkina
From that article:
"Shepard and Metzler’s visual stimuli were validated in a very specific context and may not be universally applicable, as their original experiments used a subject pool of eight adult male graduate students and faculty members at Stanford University who had many hours of practice with the subject matter"
In other words (per your earlier screenshot) "highly trained professionals in their respective fields" 🙄
ten million explosions@grimalkina bonkers. This could've been written nearly word for word 60 years ago when the companies were giving personality tests to determine potential programming aptitude (not the study you just linked)
mhoye@grimalkina Is this people p-hacking their way through the data, back towards their existing preconceptions?
This isn't just unscientific, this is anti-science.
Tucker McKnight@grimalkina Some coworkers and I (at a software company) were just talking about this last week. We were wondering if any of these tests, which claim to show gender-based aptitude for spatial ability, account for how boys and girls are raised as children.
Because within our group, all of the men had been given Lego sets and Knex when we were kids, and the women were given dolls. And then they give you a "spatial ability" test, which usually involves stacking blocks of some kind.
@tuckerm totally. Research commentary agrees with you, e.g., this piece talks about differences in developmental activities as well as the lack of clear definitions about what "spatial ability" is
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2023.1138607/full
@grimalkina Interesting! Definitely bookmarking that for later.
PedestrianError 
@tuckerm @grimalkina We need parents who are able to read studies like these, analyze the problems with them, and use them to inform how they raise their children equitably instead of reading the headline and using it as confirmation bias for their plans to raise little gender stereotypes.
often frowned upon@grimalkina some anecdotal data points
- my spatial ability is terrible, whenever any 3D related task arises i'm stuck on most primitive things.
- 3D related tasks do not arise in my work very often (7D tasks do, lately, good luck mentally rotating that).
- am a guy.
So like even starting assumptions seem made up. I bet most visual artists and designers do more mental rotation than stem people.
Laura@virtulis @grimalkina We have to do these tasks at Descriptive Geometry classes at the beginning of Architecture training. It’s really hard for some - but everyone eventually gets good at it because it’s a skill you can learn.
fuck me. this type of "holy crap i can't believe this is publishable why am I reading this in a journal" material was a reason for disenchantment in pysch /wandering away 20 years ago.
Psychology is absolutely one of the richest fields of "ohai we are actually measuring the colony" out there, with stunning lack of introspection. Not to mention the half assed biz/HR/economic stuff...
@adamsteer well scroll up the thread and you'll see that CS and engineering is worse.
@grimalkina I did 😬 and I know 🙃.
I'm so full of rant about *all of this*. I'm happy to see other people who are better at articulating it speak up also 💪🙌
@adamsteer I hear you I really do. I have to titrate how much I think about it or it's just despair inducing!! and I have to connect criticizing stuff to developing some education or balance it with enough trying to do helpful work or otherwise inject creation and progress into the whole thing. As far as possible at least
Jeff GriggPlease consider "Delusions of Gender", by Cordelia Fine, which tore into "the one repeatable gender difference test" (spatial reasoning) and referenced a study showing that the observed effects were due to "gender threat" (IE: our expectations on how well we *should* do, based on being reminded of our actual gender, or visualizing what it would be like to be the other gender).
Most Excellently Good Stuff!!! ❣️
@JeffGrigg oh yes I've read some of her papers! But not this book yet actually. I do consider stereotype threat and similar issues a lot in my own work, super useful concepts!
I read it with a book group in Chicago.
For me, it was a real "eye opener!"
(But if you've read her papers, you're probably in a better position to judge.)
Rowan Brad Quni@grimalkina Did they show a significant correlation with cranium size and brain mass as well? 🙄
Perhaps if going for the "quinfecta" of spurious correlations, their followup will include race, age, height, and shoe size!
Bo_Tally@grimalkina I always scored very high on spatial ability tests. It didn’t seem to help.
Elle Plaster@grimalkina Sewing is all about spatial ability, as are many useful skills traditionally considered women's work. So you can just stop right there buddy.
eyrea@Elleaster @grimalkina Funny thing about that one. Until the 18th century, ALL professional sewists were men (see tailor vs dressmaker). Then women started making Mantua gowns, which was allowed because they were not tailored, but draped.
Max Leibman@grimalkina I think it’s time to admit that men are just better than women at certain tasks. Such as the task of cherry-picking data to show that men are better than women.
@grimalkina Well, of course. That's why areas like quilting, sewing, and knitting have so few women involved in them.
/Sarcasm
I dare anyone claiming women aren't good at special ability to say it to a group of expert quilters. But only if I can be there to time when it takes for the quilters to stop laughing.
JJ Celery@grimalkina I, a girl who is good at rotating cows in her mind, and directions, and math, and also an immigrant, am tired of hearing that I'm "one of the good ones".
There's some people who are so deeply invested in their worldview that anyone / anything who proves them wrong is immediately dismissed as an outlier.