Thread by @AcadFreedom

This supposed 'debunking' of the 'gender equality paradox' (fewer women choose to study STEM in more gender-egalitarian countries) is not convincing

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

Its authors should absolutely be praised for closely examining the initial study and detecting that "the share of women graduating in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) was ambiguously formulated", as acknowledged in this corrigendum

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

But the authors of the freshly published paper described as a 'debunking' propose an alternative measure of the tendency of women to study and graduate in STEM: they simply take the proportion of STEM degrees that were awarded to women (as opposed to: awarded to men)

This measure takes no account of the 'baseline' that is the proportion of degrees *in any field of study* awarded to women in that country

Imagine a country A where 5% of overall college degrees are awarded to women, but 20% of the STEM degrees were awarded women

And a country B where 60% of overall college degrees are awarded to women, but 30% of the STEM degrees were awarded women

Now, the authors of the 'debunking' paper want us to consider that the women in country B are more drawn to STEM than those of country A. But this is a deeply misleading reading of the data.

In this scenario, the proportion of STEM degrees awarded to women is higher in country B than in country A. Yes.
*But*, in country B, women who go to college choose STEM much less often than in country A.

The authors of the debunking paper write: "We changed the measure of women’s achievement in STEM to the percentage of women among tertiary STEM graduates as reported by UNESCO, a measure consonant with the focus on achieved outcomes in gender-equality indices."

So yes, they changed the measure for avowedly militant reasons, substituting a bad measure for a better one

The measure in the original paper took account of the baseline rates of women and men getting college degrees.
Looking at "the percentage of women among tertiary STEM graduates" completely ignores these baseline rates.

(thread) cc. @nikitakarachoi @clairlemon @EPoe187 @BenWinegard @ImHardcory @PsychRabble

(thread) also cc. @RealYeyoZa @Scientific_Bird @a_centrism @feminiscience