> In the early years of our sample, women were less likely to be selected as members [of AAAS and NAS] than men with similar records. By the 1990s, the selection process at both academies was approximately gender-neutral, conditional on publications and citations. In the past 20 years, however, a positive preference for female members has emerged and strengthened in all three fields. Currently, women are 3-15 times more likely to be selected as members of the AAAS and NAS than men with similar publication and citation records.
I cannot access the paper, but in the introduction it also says that only 40% of new members are women.
The most likely conclusion is probably a convex combination of
1. Most of the time it is quite clear who is the best candidate and no gender-based tie-breaker is required
2. Publication- and citation records (which anyway are a lousy measure for scientific merit) are very heavily gender-biased (this was asserted in another comment)
3. The AAAS and the NAS use saner criteria than those publication- and citation records.
My guess would be that 3. has the highest weight of these.
This take doesn’t make sense. The goal never was to make up for centuries of inequality (as if we could - that’s going to be of little help to the disadvantaged women, they are dead now) or punish modern men for a past they had nothing to do with. The goal is equality, period.
Creating a world where men are disadvantaged in a mirror situation would be an abject failure. Positive bias is good as a bootstrap because feminine role models are a necessity for young girls to be able to identify with someone in the field and the situation was so unbalanced something had to be done to seed the field.
But in an equal playfield, women don’t need help to stand for themselves. At some point, we will have to stop artificially advantaging them and recognising this point is important.
> role models are a necessity for young girls to be able to identify with someone in the field and the situation was so unbalanced something had to be done to seed the field.
Wrong. The problem is not that girls are unable to feel a connection with Newton or Fleming (Most genius lives are not orbiting around sex after all). This plan don't understands (or simply choose to ignore) how many woman were inspired to became scientists after a father figure, or because their (male) fathers were scientists yet.
The real problem is that the model of "scientist girl" must compete with other --feminine-- roles. Models that show ways much more efficient and easier to became a rich, successful and popular woman. Models that spend trucks of money to assure that young girls notice them. The scientist girl must compete with one hand tied to her back, because this society choose to reward more a woman able to sing and dance, than a woman able to do research.
This is mostly a problem of woman versus woman, not of woman versus man.
Probably decades of dubious, non-reproducible, sociological research, without a real idea of how things really are in the field. Is just another case of blinded by ideology.
As a zoologist, I am perfectly able to appreciate the work of Jane Goodall and what she achieved. I don't need a "Peter Goodall" at all. This is why science was great twenty years ago and not-so-great now.
For as many centuries men have been called out to go to war, work and die in mines, sail the seas where many met their end and do other hazardous and often rather unpleasant work from which women were spared. Following your logic it would be necessary to ensure that women start working and dying in hazardous professions for a long time, dying or getting maimed at least as much as men do before there is a risk of 'overshoot' (no pun intended).
It’s as irrelevant to the core of the subject as the post it is replying to and is trying to pit against each other unrelated issues of the past. As it is a sterile way of discussing the very real issue of gender inequality today and - let’s face it - we all know where this strand of thought is coming from and where it’s going, people are downvoting.
Remember that poor men were historically just as disadvantaged as poor women. And they were never expected, or forced, to go die or get maimed in pointless wars.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w30510
The paper is not peer reviewed.