{"id":575,"date":"2008-07-20T04:20:02","date_gmt":"2008-07-20T09:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=575"},"modified":"2008-07-20T04:20:02","modified_gmt":"2008-07-20T09:20:02","slug":"plan-ix-from-outer-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/575","title":{"rendered":"Plan IX from Outer Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/scitech\/article\/2008-07\/title-ix-takes-science\">Title IX Takes on Science<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Men once greatly outnumbered women in collegiate athletics\u2014Title IX brought equality. Men currently outnumber women in science\u2014could Title IX have the same effect? Associated primarily with sports since its inception 26 years ago, Title IX actually applies to sexual discrimination throughout education. According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/07\/15\/science\/15tier.html?_r=2&amp;pagewanted=1\">recent article<\/a> in the <em>New York Times<\/em>, the National Science Foundation and NASA, at the behest of Congress, are quietly investigating whether the science departments of universities might be in violation of Title IX.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, gender discrimination is <strong>a<\/strong> problem in science, when one is addressing the lack of equal participation and representation.   Of this I have no doubt.  The question is whether it is <strong>the only<\/strong> problem, or just one of many.  (It is ironic that many of the discussions about this topic are so unscientific, because they assume that other factors play no role without having adequately established this)  The issue here, though, is whether the comparison to sports is an appropriate one to make.   It&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>Men and women don&#8217;t compete with and against <em>each other<\/em> in these sporting events.  Title IX has been very successful at expanding womens&#8217; participation in sports, because it focused on equality of opportunity and did not assume equality of ability \u2014 women are not fighting for a roster spot on a single football, soccer or baseball team, etc.  Title IX did not require adopting direct competition between the sexes; there are obvious physiological differences that make this impractical.  Certainly there are situations where the women would do better (the uneven parallel bars in gymnastics springs painfully to mind), but would have anywhere close to a 50-50 mix in most sports, if we had mixed-gender teams and ability were the only metric?  The lack of opportunity for women that prompted Title IX was the lack of teams on which they could compete, and one could (and did) create and fund these teams.  The situation in science is very much different in the difficulties that exist and the solutions that can be proffered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title IX Takes on Science Men once greatly outnumbered women in collegiate athletics\u2014Title IX brought equality. Men currently outnumber women in science\u2014could Title IX have the same effect? Associated primarily with sports since its inception 26 years ago, Title IX &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/575\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,46,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-science-general","category-science-y-observation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}